


this is no sea of mine

by what_on_io



Series: never give all the heart (for love) [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Blind Betrayal spoilers, Depictions of injury, Existential Crisis, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, Major game spoilers, Multi, Orgasm Denial, Polyamory, Post-Blind Betrayal, Pre-Slash, Recreational Drug Use, Sharing a Bed, Spanking, very light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2018-12-18 09:49:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11871795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io
Summary: “I’m sorry.”This seems to stun Hancock. The ghoul’s mouth falls open just a fraction before he catches himself, but Danse noticed. It makes him feel even worse that he can’t even remember the last time he apologised to anyone who wasn’t Maxson.“I’ve been awful to you. I shouldn’t have come here, I should’ve tried to get to Sanctuary or-"Or stayed on the damn Prydwen and let the Elder put a bullet between my eyes, Danse thinks.A storm hits Goodneighbor, and brings all kinds scuttling out of the woodwork.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! I'm trying to be speedy with updating because as soon as I go back to uni I have a new job! Exciting times, huh?
> 
> I'm awestruck at the response this series has gotten so far. Seriously, all these comments make me so happy, and make it a lot easier to face the blank page. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint - I've been looking forward to this one for ages, and now I'm gonna go run and hide.
> 
> This will be comprised of two chapters, and will hopefully be updated ASAP. 
> 
> Title from 'Fair Weather' by Dorothy Parker.

There’s a storm coming.

It’s gonna be a bad one too, Hancock thinks. Goodneighbor of all places knows how to deal with a radstorm, but the dark green tint of the sky has sent even the hardiest of citizens scuttling to the Third Rail for cover. A couple of the ghouls are still outside, soaking up the rads before they get too strong, but even the humans on the Watch are making for the Rexford.

Hancock surveys the town from his balcony and sighs. He can already feel the itch of rads at the back of his neck - a tingling feeling, not unpleasant, bit like sinking into a hot bath at the end of a long day. And God, has it been a long day.

Nick left this morning with Nora, off on some mission involving the Railroad and some heavy guns. Nora hasn’t been the same since she got into the Institute - she hasn’t confided in Hancock, but he suspects Nick understands even if she’s keeping some secrets from all of them. Ain’t Hancock’s business anyhow - he’s got enough of that to last a ghoul’s lifetime.

Hancock isn’t tired yet - rarely gets sleepy anymore, whether from the chems or the rads or both - but the heavens have already opened and thunder’s rumbling so loud overhead that there ain’t much for it but to attempt sleep. He stomps downstairs first to relieve the two Watch members at the gate - it isn’t likely raiders will bother seeking solace in Goodneighbor, and no-one’s fool enough to try anything with only green lightning to illuminate their efforts. Ham insists on taking over, though, leaving the Third Rail behind in Fahrenheit’s capable hands and standing with arms folded by the gates despite Hancock’s protests.

When Hancock gets back to his quarters, the sad candles in the corner have begun to flicker, and his desk lamp’s cut off completely. He reclines on the bed with a dramatic exhale, wishing Nick were here to huddle up to for warmth. The draught leaking in from under the balcony doors chills his feet to icicles. He thinks of the paperwork lying heaped on his desk and would even take that right now over trying to force his body to sleep. _It can wait_ , Fahrenheit would probably tell him.

Honestly, it seems everything can wait recently. He hasn’t exactly been _shirking_ his responsibilities as mayor, he reasons, just… delegating. Fahr doesn’t mind, anyway, just picks up his slack without complaint like always, and if he catches a few pitying looks thrown his way, he dutifully refrains from comment. A couple of times he’s forced himself down to the Third Rail when the evenings got too lonely, got a few rounds in for his electorate and a few deprecating comments from Charlie when he perhaps had one drink too many. It didn’t slip his notice, though, that _he’s_ always the one buyin’ - there’s certainly no consideration for the mayor’s cap purse when he’s dolin’ out free drinks.

Another flash of lightning outside sends Hancock rolling onto his stomach. The pillow’s too soft all of a sudden, as if anything could provide enough neck support in this world of rotten fabric and radroach-infestations. He writhes a bit, uncomfortable, in the bed before heaving himself out of it again - it’s no use. Between the roar of the thunder and the excited chatter from below, Hancock’ll never get any sleep.

Time passes, somehow. Sluggish and empty, but it passes, with no sign of the storm abating. Hancock spends his time alternately wrapped in too many blankets and pacing the room, one and the other until his head spins and he has to take a hit of Jet.

“Mayor Hancock?” The voice comes in the early hours of the morning, accompanied by a nervous rap of knuckles against his door. Hancock’s in a pacing phase, Jet canister in hand, and when he opens the door it’s in a frenzy, black eyes blazing in the dark. It’s Ham behind the wood, looking more frazzled than he ought to - the man’s a seasoned bodyguard, and Hancock knows how much it takes to spook him. Maybe the storm’s so bad it’s melded a bunch of super mutants together to form one giant green blob of dismembered limbs and heads. Or maybe lightning’s struck the Rexford and killed everyone inside. Maybe-

“We got trouble, boss.”

* * *

Danse doesn’t like rain at the best of times.

It wreaks havoc with his power armour, for one thing. Gets in all the grooves and rusts the parts he isn’t quick enough to clean, drips into the leg plates and through the holes in his boots. Not to mention that radstorms usually bring out the worst of the wasteland’s freaks, send ferals scuttling into his path and deathclaws into the streets from wherever they’re usually holed up. It’s been hell even getting this far.

But now he’s here, outside Goodneighbor’s gates. He’s collapsed into an exhausted, soggy heap just outside, leaning against the fence for support, helmet discarded so the rain can get to his hair and neck. Vaguely, he wonders if synths are waterproof, although he already knows the answer. Best not to think about that now, not yet. It’s been tugging at the back of his mind for the whole journey, all those miles he’d run from the airport, through the wrecked city streets to where he hopes Hancock will be-

Danse isn’t sure what he’ll do if he’s not here.

Sweat’s still pooling under his armpits and the backs of his knees from the run. It was hard enough travelling through the storm in full power armour, made only more difficult with the fact that his concentration keeps slipping and the thoughts returned sporadically when he forgot to repress them. _Give it up, Danse. You’re finished. Maxson’s on your tail even if he doesn’t catch up with you tonight, and even if -_ even if _he gave up and let you go, it doesn’t change the truth. Doesn’t change what you are._

Danse clenches his fist so tightly his nails cut scarlet ribbons into his palms. The pain centres him, quiets his mind and the worse pain still echoing through his head. Haylen’s voice at the back of his mind, screaming at him to _run, run now, Danse!_ and he had, he’d run so far-

“You! What the fuck do you want, brotherhood?” someone shouts. Danse glances up to find one of Hancock’s Neighbourhood Watch squinting down at him through the rain, rifle braced against his chest ready to shoot.

“I’m here to see Hancock.”

“Oh yeah, and we’ll just let you inside nice an’ easy, huh? You want some tea and cakes with that?”

“Please. It’s urgent.”

“You tried to take over our town last time - I ain’t lettin’ that happen again. You can screw right off back to wherever the hell you came from.”

Danse expected this. Of course he did. No-one in the Commonwealth has _befriend a Brotherhood soldier_ on the top of their to-do list, much less an ex-Brotherhood synth. But at least the ghoul on the gates hasn’t told him the worst - that Hancock isn’t here - and he hasn’t been shot yet, so…

“Look, I’m gonna count to three, tin-man, then this next bullet’s goin’ right through your thick skull. One…”

“Hey, hey, ease off him.” Danse knows without looking that it’s Hancock. Something thrills through him at the sight of the ghoul, two kinds of surprise warring with each other. Why Hancock would stick up for Danse after their last meeting, instead of having him shot on sight is a mystery; why he’s here and not snuggled up in bed with the sy- with Nick Valentine another thing entirely.

“Mayor. Sorry, I was just-“

“S’alright. Just get inside, yeah? I’ll handle this.” Hancock waves the other man away and he retreats from atop the gates. Danse shivers as another drop of rain falls through the plates of his armour and down his shoulder-blade, wishing more than anything that he was back inside the Prydwen’s warmth, tucked up in the cot that isn’t his anymore or in the rec room with Haylen.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Danse?”

“I- I had nowhere else to go,” Danse admits, knowing how awful it sounds. Now Hancock will turn him away for sure, send him back through Boston at one in the morning with super mutants on his tail. Fuck. Worse is that it’d serve Danse right if he died out here, froze to death outside Goodneighbor’s gates. Another gust of wind sends a flurry of raindrops flying into Danse’s face. Even Hancock has a tight hold on his tricorn, wavering a little on his guard-post. The storm isn’t letting up, and isn’t it fucking fitting that it happens today, when Danse wants to claw the very skin from his bones-

“Alright, c’mon in then. Goodneighbor’s of the people, for the people, after all. S’good a place as any when you ain’t got nowhere else to go.” There’s something burning behind Hancock’s words, something furious and cold that makes Danse squirm. He thanks a god he doesn’t believe in that Hancock never saw him outside his door clutching those hubflowers like a madman, because surely his pride would have hurt then even more than it does now.

The gates come open slowly, with a rattling of chains that imply the town has already bedded down for the storm. Sure enough, when Danse gets inside, the entrance is deserted, shops shut up and gas lamps extinguished.

“Thank you,” Danse murmurs when Hancock’s hopped down from his post. The ghoul from before lingers behind, probably wanting a front-row ticket to Danse getting stabbed in the gut with the knife he knows Hancock has stuffed down his left boot. That’s how he’d introduced himself to Nora, anyway - it probably happens on a regular basis in this cesspit-

“C’mon, you should get inside. You’ll catch a cold.”

It’s such a ridiculous thing to say that Danse chokes out a laugh. The sound’s foreign to his own ears, echoing around the empty town like an escaped beast. Hancock quirks what passes for an eyebrow and Danse feels a rush of pride at the fact that his mouth turns up at the corners, if only briefly. Then the ghoul’s striding off towards the Old State House, leaving Danse to trail behind.

“The paladin’s with me, don’t worry,” Hancock soothes some frenzied citizens once they’re safely indoors. Danse doesn’t bother to correct him, not yet, only steps out of his power armour with its mechanical hiss, abandoning it by the door. Usually he’d be concerned about thieves, but right now he just wants to be warm and dry and not surrounded by metal. Besides, where would anyone go in this storm? It isn’t likely Hancock’ll let him stay long, at least not in his private rooms, so Danse can just pick it up on his way back down. Maybe he can throw together enough caps to rent a room at that hotel across the street, where the junkies hole up to choke on their own guts in relative peace. Danse’s newfound moral low-ground will fit right in.

Hancock leads him upstairs to his quarters, slumps down in a desk chair and leaves Danse hovering awkwardly in the doorway. The last time they were in this room together, Danse took Hancock roughly over his bed, held his wrists tight above his head and sunk his teeth into the meat of the ghoul’s collarbone. The memory sends a shiver down Danse’s spine.

“I’m sorry to intrude on you this late.”

Hancock purses his withered lips, shrugging. “Not like I sleep much anyway. Doesn’t bother me.” He picks up a fountain pen from the desk and twirls it between his fingers. Danse only watches, slightly mesmerised, until the pen slams down hard on the desk again. “Gotta admit, though, little surprised when you of all people showed up here. Whatsit you called my town last time you were here? A cesspool? Gonna descend into, what was it? A pit of seethin’ ferals, somethin’ along those lines?”

Danse deserves this. He deserves the look Hancock’s giving him now, like he wants to shoot him or stab him or both, maybe at the same time. Danse has said all of those things and worse, spat in Hancock’s face when the ghoul’s been nothing but nice to him, really, pecking that small kiss to his cheek - and God, that one time Danse had fallen asleep in Hancock’s bed after a long guard shift, he’d covered him with a blanket like Danse was worthy of any sort of affection.

“I’m sorry.”

This seems to stun Hancock. The ghoul’s mouth falls open just a fraction before he catches himself, but Danse noticed. It makes him feel even worse that he can’t even remember the last time he apologised to anyone who wasn’t Maxson.

“I’ve been awful to you. I shouldn’t have come here, I should’ve tried to get to Sanctuary or-“ _Or stayed on the damn Prydwen and let the Elder put a bullet between my eyes._

“Look, it doesn’t matter-“

“It does,” Danse insists. “ _You_ do. Just- just let me make it up to you, yeah? Please.”

Hancock doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring right at Danse like he’s just arrived here on a one-headed brahmin spurting flames from its backside. Danse dares to take a step towards him - anything to make this better, to make Hancock see that this wasn’t just his last option, that he’s trying - and reaches down to take the ghoul’s rough hands in his own, tugging him gently to his feet. He ignores the thought of Nick Valentine pulsing at the back of his mind, guiltily suppresses it along with Maxson’s last diatribe: _the worst kind of synths are those that hide among us, plain as day. They’re the real threat, the traitors, the spies. They must be eradicated!_

Hancock, for the most part, goes along with it like his strings have been cut. Lets Danse divest them both of their pants and ease them back on the bed like they’ve done hundreds of times before. Only when Danse starts unbuttoning Hancock’s shirt does the other man come back into himself; Danse is suddenly very aware that this is the first time they’ve done this, the first time he’s ever seen Hancock’s bare chest. The moment feels too intimate somehow, like he shouldn’t be looking, when in reality all of this - the embarrassed look on Hancock’s face as his eyes drop down to his chest, fingers reaching to tug his shirt back together and keep himself covered - is all Danse’s fault.

“I’m no good at this,” he admits quietly. “I don’t know how to make any of this better, but if you’d let me… I’d like to see you.”

Hancock’s hands still where they’re fluttering with his buttons. Slowly, he lets his arms drop to the mattress, lets Danse’s hands replace his own. Danse isn’t good at _soft_ , he’s never been soft with anyone before, but he tries his best now, until the shirt is fully unbuttoned and he can help Hancock remove it. Truthfully, his chest isn’t anything abhorrent to behold. There are no extra limbs sprouting from his abdomen, no rot oozing from his nipples. It’s just like the rest of him - slightly charred, and very skinny. _Home_ , Danse thinks for the second time, and wants to bury his head in the place where neck and shoulder meet.

He restrains himself, but barely. That isn’t why he’s doing this, after all. Not for his own comfort, not anymore. _Synths don’t deserve comfort. Best they should hope for is a swift execution-_

Maxson’s voice is back in Danse’s head again. He quiets it as best he can by pressing a feather-light kiss to Hancock’s belly, easing the ghoul further down on the bed so Danse can work his cock. This could be the last time he’s ever allowed to do this and a rational part of his mind is screaming at him to take his time, but the other part, the stronger part, is telling him to hurry the fuck up with it so he can forget whatever led up to this in the throes of their orgasm.

Danse somehow manages to shift their positions so he’s on the bottom, legs thrown apart with Hancock sitting in-between his thighs. He isn’t sure how exactly to communicate what he wants - can such a thing be communicated in all its angry, pulsating glory? - but he hopes Hancock will take the hint anyway, shove his fingers hard up Danse’s ass like Danse has done to him too many times to count.

“What would you like, paladin?” Hancock whispers, and the word nearly breaks Danse. He flips over onto his stomach abruptly so Hancock’s faced with his bare ass, and so he can’t see the tears pooling in Danse’s eyes.

“Fuck me,” Danse says. He hopes his voice sounds appropriately husky with arousal instead of crying - he’s a grown man ( _synth_ ), he isn’t going to start sobbing in the middle of sex. He startles a little when rough hands palm the flesh of his backside, massaging just the other side of gentle.

“You sure about that?” Hancock asks, presumably trying to keep his own voice level. It’s true they’ve never done it this way before - true Danse has never done it this way, period - but the concern’s still nice to hear. Danse would’ve thought he’d jump at the chance to have an ex-Brotherhood paladin ass-up. “You don’t have to do this ‘cause you think I want it, or anythin’. There’re ways to make it up to me without sex, y’know? Thought I made that clear last time.”

Danse knows how this must look, knows he keeps jumping back into bed with Hancock as some sort of warped apology and then blowing him off the next morning. Still, Danse just wants this part over with - wants Hancock to fill him up from the inside until Danse can’t even remember his own name, much less Haylen’s panicked voice telling him that as of this moment, Paladin Danse is M7-97, known 3rd-generation synth.

“I want this. Want you.”

Hancock huffs out an incredulous breath and starts rummaging in the nightstand for something. When he returns there’s the sound of a bottle opening and then something icy cold and insistent is pressing against Danse’s hole. The cold’s different to the chill he feels settling through his body from the storm, different, truthfully, than anything Danse has felt before. His brain belatedly realises that it’s just lube, and then Hancock’s index finger is easing into the tight heat of Danse’s ass.

It’s not painful but it’s certainly strange. And wrong, his mind supplies helpfully, when Hancock starts carefully thrusting the finger in and out.

“You don’t have to be gentle,” Danse tells him. “I was never gentle with you.”

“Trust me, you don’t want this to hurt. Not the first time, at least.”

“How did you know-“

“Just a hunch.”

“I- thank you. Although I don’t deserve it.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Danse. Not for this. You deserve gentle, idiot,” he tsks fondly. “I’m sorry I was mad before. I ain’t now.”

“I know,” Danse echoes, and this time the tears are all too obvious, the lump in his throat choking him, robbing him of ordinary speech functions. Perhaps he’s about to throw up some rivets or a bunch of wiring, right onto Hancock’s bedsheets. Maybe that would remind him of Valentine.

Hancock’s thrusts slow, finger retreating. Danse almost whines at the loss, even though they’d begun to take on a chant of _synth, synth, synth_ with every outward motion.

“Hey, hey. Danse. You okay?”

Danse tries to say yes, he really does. After all, Hancock deserves this, deserves to have Danse’s body to use as he sees fit. Danse is always getting in the way, sidling in between him and Nick Valentine like he belongs there, and the least he can do is offer himself up to Hancock now, as an apology, even if he is choked with tears. Guiltily, Danse thinks he’d have carried on if their positions were switched.

“Sweetheart? What’s wrong? C’mon, talk to me.” Hancock’s sitting upright now, lube discarded between them and dripping from between Danse’s legs. The endearment nearly finishes him off.

“Nothing,” he tries to say. The word emerges as _nngthng_ , at best, and then Danse is crying properly. Hancock’s arms slide around Danse’s shoulders to hold him through the sobs, a hand snaking into his hair and stroking gently.

“C’mon, sunshine. We don’t gotta do anythin’ you don’t want to, I told ya. If this was too much-“

“I’m a synth.”

* * *

Silence hangs heavy between them for a moment. Hancock’s stunned speechless for once, his fingers still tangled in Danse’s hair. Slowly he retracts them, shuffling around so he can look Danse in the eye again.

“You’re what?”

Danse is breathing like he’s in agonising pain; which, Hancock supposes, he might be. The man raises his head slightly so they’re eye to eye, brow furrowing.

“So it’s okay when it’s Valentine, but this is a deal-breaker?” he asks, so suddenly it leaves Hancock’s head spinning, mentally scrabbling for purchase. Danse is up off the bed in a flash, reaching for his discarded underwear and yanking it to his hips.

“Danse, what-“

“I’m a synth, alright? You’re looking at M7-97, another discarded Institute project. Now your two lovers match, huh?”

Hancock doesn’t know what he can possibly say to make any of this better, to wind back time so they’re tangled together again. He doesn’t know when Danse found out about Nick, doesn’t know how long he’s been harbouring this little cliffhanger, but judging by the fire in his eyes and the frantic way he’s now rummaging inside Hancock’s desk he’d say it’s a fairly recent wound.

“What are you lookin’ for, huh?” Hancock brings himself to ask, dragging himself up to join Danse. He’s still wearing his boxers, thankfully - the last thing he wants is his dwindling erection flapping between them during this particular conversation. “I can help ya look if you tell me.”

Danse looks up from his desperate search, dark hair flopping into his eyes. The look he shoots Hancock is accusatory, as though he’s purposely keeping whatever Danse wants behind his back, goading him.

“You have enough chems in here, don’t you? I want some. Anything. I need-“

Hancock has a pretty good idea what Danse thinks he needs - what he’d come here for in the first place, another angry fuck over the wooden bed-frame with him on the bottom for a change. Hancock can imagine driving his fingers hard into Danse’s ass, and then his cock following shortly after, forgoing the lube as Danse has done so often. The sounds he’ll make. The slap of flesh against flesh-

But that ain’t what Danse needs, not right now.

“Since when do you do chems?”

“Since I found out I wasn’t human. Can’t do much damage to a bunch of wiring, can it?”

“Look, this probably isn’t the best time to start experimentin’-“

Too late. Danse has fished a Psycho syringe out of the drawer and he’s fiddling with the plunger, holding it up to the faint green light coming from the window to better see its contents.

“This’ll do, right? What is it?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to take Psycho right now-“

“How the fuck do you know what I want, ghoul?”

“Oh, so we’re back to ‘ghoul’ now, are we? Look, if there’s one thing I know about, it’s chems, and all that’ll do is get you even more riled up. Make you anxious. You really want that right now?”

Danse falls silent, letting the syringe flop back to the desk. He looks lost, so lost that Hancock just wants to hold him again. Like that could make any of this okay.

“No. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry, I keep messing this up. I’m going to keep doing that, y’know. I’m going to keep fucking up and if you still want me here now, you won’t eventually. Maxson was right to throw me out. Hell, he would’ve been right to put a bullet in my brain, only I ran out on him before he could get to me.”

“What? They threw you out?”

“Maxson’s probably ordered my execution by now. Haylen helped me escape. I ran all the way here-“

“Shit, Danse,” Hancock echoes.

“They were right,” Danse mumbles, defeated. “I shouldn’t be here. I should’ve stayed and knelt at Maxson’s feet while he shot me. It’s what any good soldier would’ve done. I let my fear get the better of me.”

“I’m glad you did,” Hancock admits. “Look, if you really want somethin’ to calm you down, take some Med-X. Jet’ll work too, but I’m not sure you want everythin’ slowing down right now.”

“Where’s the Med-X, then?”

Hancock leaves his side briefly to rummage in the same drawer, retracting a smaller syringe filled with clear liquid. “Here.”

Danse looks at the syringe like it’s about to grow claws and lash out at him. Slowly, he uncaps it, some of the anger draining from his posture while he glares at the chem. The colour’s gone from his face, but he rolls his sleeve up like a champ, readying the needle.

"You need some help with that, sunshine?" Hancock offers, watching Danse tap for air bubbles as if this is just another medical on the Prydwen. He grits his teeth before answering.

"No." He doesn't move to inject the chem, though, just goes right on staring at it, like the Med-X will decide for him. "I don't think..."

“Not a good idea, huh? C’mere. Sit with me.” Hancock plucks the syringe back gladly, deposits it on the desk and tugs Danse back over to the bed. Chems aren’t good for a crutch, he only ever uses them if it’s gonna be fun; or, at the very worst, to get him through a fight he ain’t likely to win. Danse will probably have enough regrets come morning - Hancock doesn’t fancy adding to the list.

“Look, Danse, this doesn’t change anythin’. I don’t care what those assholes drilled into you - synths aren’t inherently bad. You’re a person first and foremost, human or not. Hell, look at Nicky. Curie. Sturges, even.”

“Sturges is a synth?” Danse asks, seemingly glad of the change in topic. Hancock huffs a little laugh.

“Yeah. See? You wouldn’t know it to look at the guy.”

“They’re - _we’re_ \- the worst kind. Traitors in a skin-suit.”

“Wow, that’s a new one,” Hancock says, a laugh threatening to bubble up his throat. He imagines Nick’s face at hearing _traitors in a skin-suit_ , knowing he’d probably say _Institute didn’t even bother giving me_ that _premium add-on_.

“You think this is funny? My whole world’s been turned upside down and I’ve lost my home, my family, my sense of self - and you’re laughing?”

“No!” Hancock protests weakly, still giggling.Danse looks furious for a second, dark brows furrowing so far they obscure his eyes. This only serves to make Hancock laugh harder.

“This might be a joke to you, _ghoul_ , but this is my life. My _life_ and none of it has ever been real! My memories, my body. None of it. And you can still stand to be in the same room as me, still sit here so close our knees are touching. You don’t care that I’m only masquerading as a human? That the Institute could easily slam a recall button and send me running back to them? You really don’t mind being _touched_ by a synth?” As if to punctuate his point, Danse leans closer, resting both palms on Hancock’s knees. Their faces are so close Hancock can feel Danse’s ragged breaths against his skin, hot and fluttery. He stops laughing.

Danse is the one to close the distance between them. His lips press against Hancock’s, hard and insistent, shoving him back further onto the bed. It’s like going back in time, back before all of this emotional crap muscled its way in, and it’s almost a relief.

It doesn’t last long, though. The pressure eases up suddenly until their mouths are only moving together gently, tongues intertwining. Danse tastes faintly of toothpaste, with an undertone of Commonwealth grit, and his hands are so gentle against Hancock’s back. His thumbs rub slow circles into the bare flesh there, and when Hancock finally leans back to breathe Danse’s lips only take their butterfly kisses to his collarbone. Hancock nudges his face skyward so he can join their lips together again, finally feeling enough like himself to slide his own hands around Danse’s back, feeling the muscles rippling there.

When it’s over they’re both weak at the knees. Hancock touches a finger to his lips, just to make sure that all really happened and wasn’t just another Jet fever dream. Danse looks equally shocked, looking up at him through thick lashes.

“That was…”

“Uh-huh.” Their first kiss, and it’s left them both speechless. Hancock can only bring himself to tug Danse a little further back onto the bed so he can cover them both with blankets.

“Can I stay?” Danse asks, like it wasn’t already obvious. Hancock chuckles again.

“Yeah. S’long as you want.”

“I can get a hotel room if you’d prefer.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue.”

“Really? Because anyone could walk in right now. Your bodyguard, the one with the red hair. Or the gh- man from the gates. Or Nick Valentine-“

“Knew we’d get back to this eventually.”

“I saw you two kissing. I was dropping by to, uh. See you. To apologise for what I said that night. But you were…”

“Yeah, me and Nicky are a thing.” Danse looks stricken, like he’s about to bolt from the bed again and run straight for his power armour this time. Hancock halts him with a hand on his forearm, humming in a way that he hopes is soothing until he can pull Danse closer again, spooned up against his front.

“Look, I might not have the best track record, karma-wise, but you cheating on Nick Valentine doesn’t sound like something that falls on the positive end of the scale.”

“I’m not cheatin’ on him,” Hancock says, perhaps a little too abruptly. “We ain’t exclusive. Nick knows about… us.”

“Oh,” Danse offers, dumbfounded. “Looks like I need to apologise to him, too. I’ll write a list. Free punch to everyone I ever called an abomination.” There’s a sleepy edge to Danse’s voice now, and it’s making Hancock’s eyelids droop.

“Don’t you go doin’ that,” he protests weakly. “Ain’t enough Stimpaks in the world.”

Danse laughs, already on the verge of sleep. Hancock’s hand goes back to his hair, the other arm slung over his bare waist while the lighting paints them both green.

“You okay?” Hancock asks, though he thinks he still knows the answer.

“Outstanding,” Danse murmurs. “Goodnight, John.”

“Night, Danse. Sleep tight.”

They both do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danse isn't coping with his new identity very well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm exhausted but posting this so please don't judge it too harshly - I'll edit properly tomorrow! 
> 
> Finally finished with essay deadlines and have time to write again!

Hancock wakes to dull green-grey light filtering through a broken window, and a large figure crouched at the foot of his bed.

It takes him a minute to recognise Danse, only clad in dirty white underpants. He'd half expected him to be trussed up in a full clanking suit of power armour again, ready to make a run for it. As it is, Danse is just... crouching. Hancock is hard pressed to tell whether he's even breathing.

"Danse?" he asks, just to check. The other man doesn't stir, not even when Hancock slides naked out of bed to get a better look at whatever the hell he's doing.

Danse is hunched in on himself on the grimy State House floorboards, chin tucked into his chest. His biceps are taut - come to think of it, the whole of him's taut, coiled like a trampoline spring - and there's something clutched in his right hand that Hancock can't quite make out.

His first assumption is chems. Many a man would say that chems are always Hancock's first thought (they'd be wrong, of course, because he's actually a multi-faceted individual who will always, always choose the handsome man curled beside his bed over chems, come on) but Danse had been intent on injecting something or anything last night. But the Med-X still lies abandoned on the desk, and Hancock had tucked the Psycho safely out of reach before sleep.  
  
Something else, then.

"C'mon, sunshine, whatcha holdin' out on me?" he rasps softly, leaning in just a touch closer.

He somehow isn't expecting the knife.

It's the one Hancock usually wears in his boot, for easy access in a sticky situation. His prized blade, the one he'd endeared many a citizen to him with, the very knife he'd used to gut Finn out on Goodneighbour's steps. It's now sticky with Danse's blood, the tip of it still embedded in the other man's forearm.

"Oh c'mon, Danse, whatcha doing this to yourself for? There's probably enough people out for your blood without adding yourself to the list." He'd meant it to be a joke, but it falls a bit cruelly into the space between them, even if Danse doesn't react. He seems to have fallen into a trance, or else he isn't fully awake, and there's nothing much Hancock can do except ease the knife out of his clenched fist and run to fetch bandages.

When he comes back, Danse is sitting upright on the edge of the bed, and he glances up when Hancock comes in.

"I- I didn't intend to make you waste your supplies," he starts, gesturing to the first aid kit bundled in the mayor's arms, but Hancock only shushes him. "I just wanted..."

"Oh, I gotta hear this," he says. The vodka he's brought along to clean the wound elicits just the right pained whine from Danse that makes Hancock feel a bit better about this whole thing. Better make him remorseful enough that he won't try this shit again.

"I just had to check."

"Check what? Whether you'd left your brain in your left forearm?"

"Shut up," Danse sighs, but there's no bite to it. "I figured I should have known. If I was a synth or not. I've been injured enough times, I've _bled_ enough times, I figured I should've been able to tell the difference between real blood and synthetic-"

"So you went for a little rummage around?" Hancock muses, cutting a length of bandage and fixing it best he can to Danse's arm, still lazily oozing blood. It looks pretty damn real from where he's standing.

"I could hardly sleep, knowing that there's- that there's metal and plastic and wiring somewhere inside me. I had to get it out. I have to get it out, Hancock.”

"Don't be an ass." The bandage is firmly in place now. Hancock doesn't let go of Danse's wrist where he's holding it steady; he tightens his grip, squeezing just hard enough to make Danse look at him. When he finally does, his gaze is unsteady, wavering between Hancock’s cheek and the edge of the dresser.

“Look, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, Danse, whether you bleed red or blue or silver. Do you _feel_? Like a person? Like anything?”

“Of course I do. I thought I was human for my whole life-“

“And you still think, now that you know you’re a synth. You’re feeling angry and confused enough to start slicing yourself up, which _probably_ means you’re a person. Going by that whole pre-war philosophy bullshit, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.” Danse slumps half against Hancock and half against the bedpost suddenly, the fight seeping out of him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay with any of this. I can feel them ticking away inside of me, all those cogs and gears.”

“I know,” Hancock murmurs, and thinks of pressing Danse’s head into his chest, just for a minute. To silence his roaring thoughts. He doesn’t, though, just lets him breathe, come to terms with things himself. “I love you,” he does say eventually, in case it helps. If Danse’s resulting sniffle is anything to go by, it does, if only marginally. It’s the first time.

“I love you too.”

It’s more anticlimactic than Hancock imagined. And Atom, how he’d imagined it. Danse bellowing it from the bridge of the Prydwen, in front of his precious Elder. Danse down on his knees, face pressed into the crease of Hancock’s groin, the words emerging between filthier things. Both of them sitting on top of one of the old cars at the Starlight Drive-In, watching some old movie with no sound in the moonlight.

“C’mon. We should get up. No point mopin’ around here all day, huh?” Hancock suggests, knowing what he was like when Danse left for the ship. He’d spent so much time sitting alone in his underwear, unwashed, that Fahrenheit insisted on sleeping in the corridor.

“Right. Yeah. Okay.” Danse sounds slightly drunk, making Hancock wonder after the bottle of Bourbon he’d had stashed under the bed. He eases himself slowly to his feet, wobbles a bit, looking small and a bit pathetic without the power armour.

Breakfast, Hancock decides while he’s pulling on his clothes, although he doesn’t usually eat it himself. Charlie cooks up what he calls a full English, though, and it’ll do Danse some good to be around other people. Less likely to get caught up in his own spiralling thoughts that way.

“Third Rail okay with you?” he asks Danse, just to make sure. The other man just nods, dragging his feet back into his boots, which are still wet through from the night before. Worse, he hasn’t put any clothes on yet.

“You goin’ outside like that?” Hancock smirks, looking at Danse in his boxers and a single boot. “Not that I’m complainin’…”

“What?” He looks down at himself as if only just realising his state of undress. “Oh. No. I’ll just- give me a minute.”

Hancock does, stepping out into the hallway facing the spiral staircase, giving the other man some privacy. He leans against the railing, pretending this is his balcony and he’s about to make a speech to the masses, _hey folks, your good old mayor is finally settling down, got himself a man for each arm_.

“Mayor Hancock?” someone’s saying, interrupting his daydream. When he turns to look it’s one of the Watch, rifle slung across his front, looking frazzled.

“Yeah?” Hancock prompts.

“There’s- there’s trouble. Big trouble. Brotherhood outside the gates.”

“Aw, shit,” Hancock mutters. He knew all of this was too good to be true. “I’ll be right out.”

* * *

  
Nora hasn’t left Shaun’s old room for four days.

There’s something about sitting in the dark with her head resting on the bars of her baby’s rotten old crib that’s somehow innately comforting, something that reaches her even through the numbness. Like when she opens her eyes the world will be back to normal - the rust will be off the furniture, the wallpaper will be back to its stars and planets motif, and Nate will nudge the bedroom door open with his shoulder with Shaun in his arms and tuck him under his blankets.

Every time she does open her eyes it’s like a fresh blow.

At first she’d been so certain that all of this was just a bad dream. There’d been so much on the news in the run up to the bombs that it must have crept into her subconscious. The commies were advancing, fallout shelters sprouting up across the country. It was more than enough to get to a person. Sometimes she’d be trembling so much at night that Nate would have to form a human blanket and drape himself across her, whispering platitudes into her ear.

When she woke up in the vault, Nora floated past the corpses scattered across the floor, past Nate’s body in his cryo tank, past the giant mutated cockroaches scuttling under her feet, and when she reached the vault door she was laughing, because she’d be waking up soon. Dreams just don’t last that long.

Now she lies listlessly on the floor of her old house, the plastic pillars of the crib imprinting red blotches across her skin, and she can’t laugh and she can’t cry. At first there’d been screaming, endless, wordless screaming that Nick hadn’t been able to stop, and Mac hadn’t been able to stop, until eventually she’d run out of breath and collapsed on the ground. She’d found the energy to croak at them both to leave her alone; Mac has tried to bring her food a couple of times since then, but she’s left the dishes by the door, untouched.

She doesn’t want two-headed cow meat anymore.

She’ll say one thing for the Institute - they know how to keep the place hygienic.

_You can have a good life here, mother. With me._

Nora dozes for a while, folded in on herself, until she hears muffled voices from the lounge that break her slumber. It sounds like yelling - the loudest noise she’s heard in days. Maybe some super-mutants have gotten in.

Wouldn’t that be a relief.

“I can’t tell her! She’s broken enough right now, Valentine, I’m sure as he- heck not gonna make it worse. I-“

“Nora would want to know.” That’s Nick’s voice, unmistakable by the mechanical inflection and click of internal processors. Nora hates herself for thinking it, but she wants to be far away from him right now. Enough synths in the whole damn Institute to last her a lifetime.

“You really think heaping more bad news on her is fair? She just found out she's missed her son's whole life and now he's the dying leader of some shady organisation, and you think she needs to worry about my son, too?"

This is enough to rouse Nora from her hiding place. Even enough to face Nick, with the whirring of his gears and the click of his internal processors. She levers herself up on the old crib - _never mind she wants to smash the whole damn thing into pieces, never mind Shaun will never be small enough to sleep in it again, never mind he's a seventy year old megalomanic_ \- and pads over to the door.

The bolts she's installed take a couple seconds to unfasten, and the rumbling of metal alerts the two men to her stirring. MacCready turns to her so fast she misses the movement, and Nick's already watching like he expected this all along. He probably did.

"Nora, you're up," Mac says unnecessarily. "How are you feeling?"

"What's wrong with Duncan?" Nora presses, scrubbing her wrist across her forehead in an attempt to feel slightly more alert. She hasn't washed in four days, and even in a nuclear wasteland a man has to have some standards, so she keeps a wary distance from MacCready, although he can probably smell her anyway. Not that it matters. Not that anything matters anymore.

"Oh, uh, it's nothing you need to worry about," Mac says, looking at the floor so she knows he's lying. "Do you want some food? You should try to eat something, get some sugar in you-"

"MacCready, what's wrong with Duncan?" Nora asks again in a level voice. Nick risks a step closer to her, his good left hand hesitantly going for her shoulder. Nora flinches away - doesn't mean to, but she does - and the hand falls back to Nick's side, defeated.

"The cure didn't work," MacCready admits. "It got there two weeks ago. Daisy sent word a couple days ago - Duncan's no better."

"Oh, Mac, I'm so sorry," Nora breathes. MacCready's shoulders slump and he collapses inward on himself, and Nora finds what shreds of compassion she has left and goes to hug him.

"It's not your fault," he sniffles. "You did everything you could for him. But I'm gonna have to head back to D.C. I have to see him before-"

"MacCready, we're gonna work something out. You know that. We're not giving up on him," Nora says. It's so much easier now, with someone else's kid at stake, to snap back into Nora the Saviour, Nora the Minutemen General who always has a plan even when she can't breathe.

"There's nothing we can do. Maybe the Med-Tek vial was past its expiry date, but so's everything else in the Commonwealth. He doesn’t have long left.”

This stirs something in Nora, something blurry, stuffed deep away under the numbness of Shaun and the crib and the last few aching days. Something she should be able to access through the damn blockage in her stupid mother brain. She could scream with it.

“Mac…”

“I shouldn’t be gone too long,” MacCready says. The words pierce her cold as the cryo chamber did, and she steps a little closer to offer a sniffly hug. At the feel of Mac’s arms sliding around her, Nora regrets hiding away in the nursery so long. She’s missed this.

“Look, give me a day. Okay? And then… then I’ll come to D.C. with you. You’ll need an extra arm to pick off all the super-mutants you told me about, huh? Just… one day, Mac. I think I have a plan.”

And for the first time in a long time, Nora thinks this one just might work.

* * *

Elder Maxson is waiting for him at the gates.

Credit where credit’s due, of course, to Hancock’s little cesspit - Goodneighbor run a tight security detail. The cluster of Brotherhood soldiers haven’t gotten past the triggermen at the walls, even decked out in full armour. Through a ragged hole cut in the metal, Danse glimpses Maxson, standing out in the open in just his battle-coat, and he still manages to make Danse’s knees quake.

Although that could be just as much to do with the colossal minigun the Elder has braced against his chest.

“How d’you wanna play this, Danse?” Hancock asks in a low voice, while the gates are still chained shut from the storm. Danse imagines opening them up and striding right over to Maxson, falling to his knees, feeling the welcome embrace of oblivion while the bullet slides home.

Then he thinks of Hancock’s body flush against his, pale moonlight falling over them both, an open-mouthed kiss to his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Danse admits. “They won’t go quietly.”

“We have enough men.”

“You can’t fight them,” Danse says. This earns him a bemused smirk from the other man, brow quirking upwards.

“Says who? Goodneighbor might not look like much, but we pack a hell of a lotta firepower.”

“That’s… not what I meant. You can’t just kill the Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel. They’re - they were - my family.”

“They threw you out! They want you dead, Danse. I know as well as anybody that family doesn’t mean a thing when politics get involved. My brother can attest to that.”

“They’re good people-“

“No, they ain’t. Danse, if it comes down to it, I gotta protect my town. I’m the mayor. I ain’t gonna let some Brotherhood bigots gun everyone down, not for anybody.”  
  
“I won’t let you kill them, either.” Danse imagines Maxson’s head exploding with a blast from Hancock’s shotgun. Imagines the knife he’d been using to dig around in his own forearm that morning piercing the Elder’s gut, through the leather of his coat, blood erupting scarlet against the sidewalk. He feels sick.

“It seems we’ve reached an impasse, then,” Hancock grits out. Danse sees his hand twitch towards his gun. He tries imagining Hancock lying lifeless by the gates of his own town, stomach and frock coat gaping from Maxson’s weapon. He wishes the choice were easy.

“They won’t attack Goodneighbor now, not with so few men. Not if I don’t give them reason to.”

“Danse-“

“It’s the only way this is ever going to end peacefully.”

“You call that peace? A bullet to the brain of the man I love is peaceful? Danse, we both know I can’t let that happen.”

“It isn’t your decision,” Danse mutters, trying to ignore the way his gut clenches when Hancock says _love_. “Open the gates!”

“Danse!”

Too late. The chains are cast down, and the metal gates of Goodneighbor grind open. Danse, in borrowed civilian clothes, unarmed, stands before the Elder with shoulders squared and his ghoul lover by his side, and just about manages not to faint dead away.

“Elder Maxson,” he greets, civilly, fighting the urge to salute. He’s flanked by Rhys and another Knight Danse doesn’t know the name of, with two heavily armoured Paladins further back. One itchy trigger finger could blast Danse into shreds in the street.

“Synth,” Maxson says, and this too manages to sound oddly civil. Danse grits his teeth, but doesn’t lose the tight composure he’s schooled his body into. Not for this.  
  
“Thought you’d come scurrying under the wing of this place’s assortment of freaks, did you, synth? Thought they’d hide you from your true fate?”

“They’re not-“ Danse begins, startling himself. Some ancient Brotherhood instinct cuts the sentence off partway through, but he hopes Hancock appreciates the sentiment all the same. “I didn’t intend to hide.”

“How about this, ghoul? Hand the traitor over and we’ll back off. Your… _town_ goes free.”

It’s a good offer, Danse thinks. Maxson doesn’t often go back on his word. It’s probably the best they’ll get, anyway, and he waits for Hancock to condemn him, for the crowd to urge him forward and out of the safety of the gates.

“Fuck you, you big metal fuck,” Hancock says instead. There are a few hollers of agreement from the gathered spectators, and Danse goes rigid with shock. “Danse is one of us now. Although I guess you Brotherhood dicks wouldn’t know much about loyalty, huh?”

“Last chance, ghoul. I’m getting tired of your disrespect.”

“That’s a real shame. Maybe you and your sidekicks shouldn’t be encroaching on my territory then, huh? Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”

Maxson just rolls his eyes. “Hand the synth over.”

“No.”

“Fine,” he sighs. “You’re just making this harder on your own people, ghoul. Just like Danse here did, running away like that. Haylen’s been dismissed for her insubordination. Your actions have relegated her to the life of a peasant, and for what? It ends here.”

“Haylen doesn’t deserve that!” Danse explodes. “She’s a good soldier. She may have let her emotions cloud her judgement for a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean-“

“It’s done, synth. She’s gone. Probably scrounging the streets for food scraps by now. And you’d have been doing the same, if we hadn’t found you first, Danse. Really, this is a mercy mission.”

Danse’s vision is hazy with anger. He remembers Haylen’s frantic face as she’d hissed at him to _get the fuck out of here, now_ , and he’d been about to snap at her for misconduct, except she’d shoved a list of Institute synths into his hand and the feeling had gone out of his legs. He remembers her, drunk and giggling, swearing not to tell on him, that she hope’s he’s _happy_ , of all things.

“She deserves better!” Danse bellows, forgetting all about the minigun and the Paladins and everything except the raw fury currently tearing up his skull. He’s vaguely aware of Hancock’s hand in the crook of his arm, tugging him back slightly, but Danse is stronger, compelled by furious adrenaline to march right over there and-  
  
The barrel of a loaded machine gun is thrust into his face, and he stops cold.

“I suggest you stop right there, Danse. Now, do you want to end this nice and quietly, or do you insist on making a scene?” Maxson asks, so calmly they could be discussing ambush tactics or the weather.  
  
“You lay one finger on him-“ Hancock cuts in, “-and I’ll break ‘em all off, you hear me?”

“Very nice work on getting the ghoul onside, synth. That really is a new low,” Maxson chuckles. “Now, on your knees.”

“No,” Danse says.

Maxson just laughs. With one lazy swipe, he thwacks the full weight of the gun around, two-handed, to collide with the backs of Danse’s knees, sending him sprawling, face-first, onto the gravel. Pain shoots across his face and legs simultaneously, and he hears Hancock shout as if from a great distance away.

“ _On your knees_ , Danse. I won’t ask again.”

The command tugs at something deep and twisted inside of Danse, and, like a puppet with its strings yanked, he drags himself up painfully to kneel. He can feel dozens of pairs of eyes settle on his submissive stance - Goodneighbor are probably thankful for the excitement, the chance to jeer at a Brotherhood exile on his knees.

“I mean it, asshole. I won’t tell you again,” Hancock hollers, and Danse can feel the man’s presence at his back like physical heat. God, he’ll miss him. The absence is almost tangible, all those mornings he’d imagined waking up next to Hancock in his Jet-fuelled haze, the fucking and kissing and hell, even the explaining to Nick fucking Valentine - it all recedes away from him like a wave.

“Now I’m a fair man, Danse, so I’ll ask if you have any last words,” Maxson goes on, as though Hancock hadn’t spoken.

“Fuck you,” Danse spits.

“Yeah, man, fuck you,” Hancock echoes, and cocks his shotgun so suddenly it makes Danse jump. One blast sends Maxson flat against the wall, another takes out his jugular and half of his neck. Maxson’s face is frozen in a parody of shock, like he hadn’t had the time to believe Hancock would have the gall. Blood spurts like sauce in a pre-war horror movie, spraying a few of the nearby spectators in scarlet. The Paladins are the first to react, weapons already drawn, and turn their hefty arsenal to Hancock. Danse scrabbles to his feet in the fray, orients himself enough to fumble for Maxson’s fallen gun. Metal cool and solid in his hands, he spins to face Rhys, who’s bleeding from the thigh and leaning his weight on a streetlamp. Not an immediate threat, then.

One of the Paladins is drawing closer, though - the other lying dead a few feet away from Hancock. Danse grips the gun tight and moves one finger hesitantly towards the trigger, trying to stop the quaking in his arms. The Paladin’s rifle is already aimed square at his chest. He has less than a second to pull that trigger-

Hancock cries out somewhere behind him, a grunt of pain that hits Danse somewhere low, and he shoots out of pure instinct. The kick of the machine gun wouldn’t be anything if he were wearing his power armour, but Danse isn’t used to fighting in just a shirt and jeans, and it nearly sends him sprawling backwards. The spray of bullets is just about enough to take the Paladin down before Danse collapses under the strain of it, and, glancing gratefully around, he sees the other Knight is already dead by Hancock’s hand.

Which just leaves Rhys.

“What d’you wanna do with this one?” Hancock asks. Rhys has collapsed against the wall in a puddle of his own blood, gun held limply at his side. His eyes are glazed over, but he manages to gasp out a frightened _Danse_.

“Get him to a doctor. He’s not a threat,” Danse tells him, although it might not be true. Hancock nods tersely anyway, snaps at one of his men to cart Rhys off to Amari, and then takes a couple of nervous steps towards Danse.

“I’m sorry it had to go like that,” he murmurs. Danse isn’t sure whether to laugh or scream, so he settles for a half-sob, half-chuckle.

“I’ve been blind,” he says. “Haylen’s a good woman. I need to find her.”

“Maybe remember your armour this time, though.” Hancock grins, nudging Danse’s arm lightly. “I thought you were a goner for sure.”

“You know the Brotherhood can’t let this go, right? There’ll be repercussions. They’ll send armies.”

“Well, that’s tomorrow’s problem. Right now… how about that breakfast?” The words are tentative, like Hancock’s waiting for Danse to blame him for this whole thing, as if Danse hasn’t been working for a corrupted bunch of bastards for the majority of his existence, isn’t still one of those bastards himself.

“Breakfast is good.”

And it is.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this the worst chapter of anything ever written by a member of the human race? Could there be any more dialogue or POV changes crammed in here? Should I just give up on writing anything, ever, for the rest of my life? 
> 
> All these questions and more are answered inside!

Fluorescent white.

That’s Nora’s reigning impression of the Institute. White walls, crisp white bedsheets, white lab coats, white synth uniforms. White pills and white food containers, white blank looks on faces.  
  
The elevator’s glass doors slide open with a chime and she steps out onto artificial (green!) grass, greeted by a few empty smiles of the synths working nearby and a couple of the doctors having lunch on a bench. The triangular finger sandwiches and orange juice look so fresh she could cry - no two-hundred year old beef jerky for the people down here, no sir. Nora hates it, but she feels more at home than she has in a long time.  
  
“Are you looking for Father?” one of the workers asks her. A human, by the looks of it, although it’s difficult to tell. Nora nods, and the woman takes her kindly by the elbow and leads her up a couple sets of stairs, a dizzying maze of white corridors, and to an office door.  
  
“Here you go, Nora. He’s just inside.”  
  
She doesn’t knock. She isn’t going to knock on her son’s door like she needs permission, even if he is technically older than her. He still doesn’t look surprised when she enters - just looks pleasantly up from a terminal on his desk and smiles blandly.  
  
“Mother. How lovely to see you again.”  
  
She sincerely doubts that. The last time she was here there’d been screaming, lots of it. She’d thrown a fancy looking metal tablet hurtling across the room and broken the screen into tiny fragments, and then tried to punch one of the synths that came to calm her down, hypodermic in hand.  
  
“I’m sure,” she says. “Look, I don’t like this, Shaun. I think I made that pretty clear last time. This doesn’t mean I’ve come round to the idea, or that I want any part of your cruelty. But I need your help.”  
  
“I’d guessed as much,” Shaun says, scraping his chair back and moving to stand. “It’s the man you’ve been travelling with, isn’t it?”  
  
Nora’s glad of the phrasing, at least - she doesn’t think she could bear hearing the word _lover_ coming from her son’s mouth. She just nods again and tries to look like she doesn’t want the ground to swallow her.  
  
“Mac’s kid’s dying. Duncan. He’s been sick for months, and the cure we found didn’t work-“  
  
“I’m sure we can cook something up, mother. Do you have a list of symptoms?”  
  
Well, shit. She hadn’t thought that far. She’d been too busy lying to MacCready about going to help Preston with something urgent, then trying to console him about where she was really going when he’d reminded her that he knew all her tells.  
  
“I… don’t know.”  
  
“Well, perhaps you could bring this ‘Mac’ down here, and I could have a word with him. I think I can allow it, just this once.”  
  
Nora feels absurdly like she’s the daughter and Shaun’s the father, and her boyfriend’s about to be grilled for his suitability. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll tell him.”  
  
“Before you go, mother… there is one small thing.”  
  
“Oh, Christ, what?”  
  
Shaun doesn’t drop the bland smile. “We’d be sacrificing a lot of good workers for this project, you see. Reassigning people from crucial tasks to help out.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“We have issues arising in other departments, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Our infiltrators have identified a major threat to the Commonwealth aboveground.”  
  
_Please don’t tell me to go after the Railroad. Please don’t make me choose._  
  
“The Brotherhood of Steel,” Shaun says, and Nora’s breath leaves her in a whoosh. The Brotherhood, she can deal with. “They could have been powerful allies, once, but their aversion to change is worrying. And that airship of theirs... We need them taking out.”  
  
“That, I can do. Just tell me the plan.”

* * *

 

Goodneighbor after the fight is... well, it's Goodneighbor. The stores open up that morning without fuss, debris from the storm and the Brotherhood's invasion cleaned up, broken fences and shelters repaired. People still allow Danse a wide berth, but he gets a few nods in his direction when he passes.  
  
After breakfast with Hancock, the ghoul pleads mayoral duties and excuses himself for what Danse can only assume is a chem break, taken in private for his benefit. Danse uses the time to sort out a hotel room at the Rexford with what little caps he has, lugs his power armour up the stairs there and throws himself on the bed. His head is pounding, adrenaline ebbing away until there's nothing left but raw, pulsing pain in his occipital lobe and his legs.  
  
He shucks off the borrowed slacks to get a good look at the wounds. He has to twist around to see the backs of his knees, but the bruising from Maxson's gun creeps around the entire circumference of both legs, turning them a sickly shade of blue. Nice as it is to know his body can replicate human physiology so well, the pain almost makes him wish otherwise. _Weak_ , Danse thinks. He should welcome it.  
  
The bullet wound in his lower thigh is still lazily oozing blood. It's only grazed him - crossfire, probably, since the wound hasn't cauterised quick enough to have come from a Brotherhood laser pistol. He'd been too distracted trying to protect himself and Hancock to really notice the pain until they'd gotten down the stairs to the Third Rail and Danse had sat down to eat, and what was an easily ignorable stinging evolved into quiet, fiery agony.  
  
He locates a half bottle of scotch in the drawers by the bed and bandages in a first aid kit in the bathroom. Leg propped up in front of him, teeth gritted, he douses the leg in alcohol, swallowing the gasp of pain as the scotch bites into his flesh. _Fuck_ , that hurts. He hasn't had to deal with bullet wounds by himself in a long time - too much time spent inside power armour, more time still surrounded by troops - _f_ _riends_  - who'd offered first aid and stimpaks. Sitting here now, alone in a rotting hotel room with the sound of what is most likely people fucking the next room over, Danse can't help but wish to be back in the fold of the Brotherhood. Safe.  
  
But he doesn't deserve _safe_ , because a good leader - perhaps not a good man, he can admit that now, but a good leader - like Maxson is dead, and Danse is still relentlessly alive, sitting here feeling the blood swarming through his synthetic veins and the beat of his mechanical heart.  
  
No point wishing for things that are impossible, anyway, and the wound is as disinfected as it's going to get, under the circumstances. He isn't even sure synths can get infections. He wraps the bandage tight anyway, tighter than is really comfortable, until his entire thigh tingles with it, and then he lets his head fall back onto the pillows. From this angle, he can just about make out the pack he's brought with him, slung under a dresser, contents spilling out onto the ratty carpet, the only things he'd been able to grab during his escape from the Prydwen. A small toolkit, brought over from his time in the Capital Wasteland, one of the only tangible memories he has of their little junk shop all those miles and years ago. If not for this tiny metal box, Danse would wonder if those memories had been synthetic, too. If Cutler had-  
  
Cutler had been the one to give him the screwdriver that sits inside, found it in a pile of rubble in good condition, hardly any rust at all. _It reminded me of you_ , Cutler told him with a laugh and a light squeeze to his bicep. _Pretty boy.  
_  
Danse's dog tags are in there, too. He can see the chain snaking out onto the floor, silver metal catching the light. He'd wanted to throw them away, cast them into the river or crush them under his boot, but something had stopped him. As he'd reached Goodneighbor he'd clutched the metal squares tightly, clenched fist curled to his chest, imprinting their shape into his own flesh. The pain had felt good. Like home.  
  
His old, tired laser pistol which is almost beyond repair now sits at the bottom of the pack, forming an odd lump in the material. It's the one he'd first been given on his entrance to the Brotherhood, a new Initiate ready to show the Wasteland what he was made of. He remembers learning how to shoot proper with Cutler by his side, both of them getting barked at by a Knight that their arms weren't steady enough, feet planted at wrong angles. Cutler had snarked that _they'd made it this long out in the Wastes, hadn't they?_ and they'd both been assigned latrine duty for a week.  
  
Danse rolls onto his back and stares up at the grotty ceiling, ignoring the pain in his thigh as best he can, away from the pack and the memories it holds. The last sight before he closes his eyes is the first aid kit - a gift from Haylen after she found out about his migraines - spilling stimpaks out onto the carpet.  
  
He sleeps.

* * *

Nick Valentine arrives in town later that day, when Danse is still hiding out in his hotel room. It's not an immediate worry. Danse will allow himself two days of rest, to gather his strength, and then he will leave Goodneighbor in search of Haylen.  
  
In the mornings he goes down to the front desk and pays rent. He asks the woman who takes his caps if he can pay for his stay upfront, but she tuts at him and grumbles, "Too many people gettin' stabbed over here for that. Ends up stinking out the rooms, leaving the bodies in there. I'm sorry." She doesn't sound especially sorry.  
  
It isn't likely that Valentine will find a reason to come to the Rexford, though, so Danse hopes he's relatively safe even accounting for the morning trips. He keeps the door locked and the blinds drawn, just in case, and spends most of his time in bed, staring at the walls. It isn't like synths need to eat. He ignores the pangs of hunger his stomach sends him, because to go in search of food would mean venturing downstairs, and there are enough people in the Commonwealth who'd shoot a Brotherhood soldier on sight, never mind in Goodneighbor. Events of the past few days be damned.  
  
Plus, a showdown with Valentine would not he good right now.  
  
Danse needs to save Haylen, and a telling-off from a synth detective doesn’t sound like the best way to achieve that goal. Danse isn’t in any real condition to fight anyone, not even a run-down Gen-2 with a grimy plastic body, and Haylen is waiting for him somewhere. He needs to reserve his energy for the road. Needs to find Haylen and bring her somewhere where she won't have to scrounge for scraps of food and swig irradiated water, where no raiders might accidentally recognise her as former Brotherhood and stick her up on one of their spikes. If they haven't gotten to her already, that is. Which is an entirely possible scenario while Danse is wasting time hiding out in a grotty hotel room, but every time he so much as shifts in the bed shocks of tremendous pain shoot up his leg. He just about makes it downstairs each day, and to the bathroom, but a trip across the Commonwealth is unthinkable until he can walk without agony.  
  
He's weak, he knows. Synthetic pain, that's all it is. It should simply be a case of mind over matter. It's not even a proper bullet wound; a scratch at best, some bruises, a headache. But it's all just _too much_.  
  
Day three arrives and Danse still hasn't suited up for his mission. His stomach contracts with a stubborn need for sustenance, and he finds himself wobbling downstairs in search of food, his stupid synthetic body betraying him once again. His bad leg screams with every step he takes - surely it should be better by now? He's seen the effect of injury on Gen-3s close up enough times to know that accelerated healing comes as part of the package. He'd cleaned and bandaged the wound. It should be at least halfway healed by now.  
  
He thinks of the stimpaks stashed away in his pack again, chastises himself. The pain is good, a reminder. He can fight through it. It's only an echo of what Haylen must be suffering, of what he's put others through.  
  
He stumbles into the lobby and confronts the desk clerk more angrily than he'd intended, but he's hurting, and she doesn't seem bothered either way.  
  
"Is there any place I can get some food around here?"  
  
"Sure, honey. Third Rail across the street can give you a hot meal, or I have some delicious two hundred year old snack cakes just waiting for the right buyer." This last is delivered with what Danse assumes is heavy sarcasm, but he nods a little too eagerly anyway.  
  
"That's fine. Snack cakes are fine. Thank you."  
  
She raises her eyebrows a little, but rummages under the counter anyway to produce a battered box of Fancy Lads. "Ten caps, honey."  
  
Danse nods, rummages in the unfamiliar pockets of his trousers to find the payment. All he can come up with is three caps. The Brotherhood didn't exactly have a steady salary - any necessary funding could be gained through the right channels, but room and board came free with the post.  
  
“I apologise," he intones, patting uselessly at his pockets. The woman just glares at him, one hand on the box, like he's a stray dog that might leap out and steal it.  
  
"I'll get that," a voice from behind says. Danse turns as well as he can on two aching legs to find Nick Valentine - of course, who else would it be? - standing a little ways off, caps already outstretched in his silicon-covered left hand. Danse tries not to flinch away as the synth approaches, settles the caps in the clerk's waiting palm. She's unperturbed at being touched by Valentine, just slides the caps into the old cash register and gives Nick a wry smile.  
  
"Thanks, Clair," Nick says, already walking away like he knows Danse will follow, leaving the snack cakes on the desk. Perhaps already weary of Danse's inevitable disgust at having him touch the box, perhaps impatient, itching for a violence he's never seemed particularly partial to.  
  
Valentine stops by the door, and Danse limps to meet him, because he doesn't know what else to do. "If you're expecting thanks, synth..." Danse lets out before he can stop himself. Nick rolls amber eyes.  
  
"I'm not," he mutters. "Just doing my civic duty."  
  
A few days ago, Danse would have said _it's your civic duty to terminate yourself before I'm forced to do it for you_. Now he just lets silence hang limp between them, clutching the junk food lamely in his hand, waiting for a punch, or worse. He has a pistol at his hip, but it won't do him much good, not with the state he's in.  
  
"Look, John's worried about you. He's been keeping tabs, wanted to give you some alone time to come to terms with things. I offered to check up on you for him."  
  
"I'm not an errant child," Danse grits out. "I don't need checking up on."  
  
"He was worried you might try to hurt yourself again. I'm not gonna waste my time standing here and preaching at you, Danse, but you should go and see Hancock."  
  
"It's none of his business," Danse lies. "And I suppose you're just fine with all this, are you? The big, benevolent, dirty Gen-2, coming to put me in my place?"  
  
"I'm not trying to do anything to you," Valentine says, sounding somewhere between bored and amused. "And I'm not a Gen-2, either. I'm a prototype. Human memories, a human mind, uploaded into a synthetic body.”  
  
Danse can’t decide whether or not that’s worse.  
  
“And for the record-” Nick says, “-any problem I may have had with you comes second. I want Hancock to be happy. You make him happy.” Nick sighs, and it sounds remarkably human. “I know what I am, Danse, don’t worry. I have to look at it in the mirror every day. Still, I try to be there for John when I can. You should go to him.”  
  
Danse is baffled. He shifts his weight to his marginally better leg, watching Valentine for any sign of humour, and finds none. Valentine just lets his gaze drop to the floor, shrugs, makes like he’s about to leave.  
  
“Hancock speaks very highly of you,” he blurts. The words feel like they emerge from some deep part of him, one he didn’t know was there.  
  
“Oh,” Nick says, sounding as surprised as Danse feels. They stand there in awkward silence. Nick takes off his fedora and scratches at his synthetic scalp - _human memories, a human mind_ \- before giving Danse one last look.  
  
“Would you tell Hancock I’m leaving?” Danse asks. “I have a mission of my own. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.” If he can find Haylen’s location, if he can walk that far, if she’s still alive, if his rotten leg doesn’t get him torn limb from limb by super mutants.  
  
“You don’t look like you’re in any condition to be running around Boston,” Nick tells him, brow plates shifting as if to resemble the quirk of an eyebrow. Danse fumbles for a response. Valentine’s a prototype. Does that mean his optical cortex has scanning capabilities beyond what the Brotherhood found on Gen-2s? The ability to read external vital signs? Perhaps an advanced version of VATS technology they’d found on Pip-Boys, heat sensors, long-range radar-  
  
"I'm a detective," Valentine says, anticipating Danse's train of thought. "Noticed you limping on the way over. There's, ah, blood on your trousers."  
  
Danse looks down, and sure enough, dirty red has seeped through the fabric and paints the back of his pants. "Right," he mutters. "As I said, I have a mission to complete. A friend's in trouble, I can't waste any more time."  
  
“You’d waste less time in the long run if you got that leg looked at,” Nick says. “Like I said, I didn’t come here to preach. But if you need help finding your friend… well, I’ve had a lot of missing person cases, that’s all.”  
  
“That would be… good,” Danse says before he can stop himself. Haylen has to be his priority, and he has no idea where to start looking by himself. Even if the synth’s an Institute spy, he has to take his chances.  
  
Plus, if he winds up dead - or whatever dead is to a non-human, anyway - well. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.  
  
“Alright then,” Nick says, sounding surprised. “Better get going then. Eat up. Might be a long road ahead.”  
  
“Thank you,” he replies. “For the assistance. And… for the food.”  
  
“Not a problem,” Nick says. He sounds like he means it.

* * *

 

Knight Rhys is pretty much exactly the sort of man Nick thought he’d be. Burly, arrogant, and stubborn as all hell. He’s still holed up in the Memory Den, against his wishes it seems, by the way tension rolls off his body, and he looks at the door whenever there’s a lull in conversation. Isn’t like Amari’s tied him to a bed or anything (though she looks like she wouldn’t be averse to it, if Nick knows her at all), ‘cause he’s busted up enough that she doesn’t have to.  
  
When Nick enters with Danse by his side - and that ain’t something he ever imagined happening, either - the soldier is lying on his side on a makeshift cot, hooked up to an IV and clutching the side of his body wadded with bloody bandages, lips parted slightly from the pain. He hardly seems to notice their entrance, so it’s Amari who hastens to explain.  
  
“I’ve done what I can for him, but I’m not a surgeon, like I keep telling you people. Cracked ribs, several bullet wounds. Probably internal bleeding, too. I’ve used my entire stimpak supply on him, and all I got for my troubles was a pathetic escape attempt and blood on the floor. The mayor insisted I keep him alive, though.” She doesn’t sound happy about this last. “He doesn’t seem very impressed by my company.”  
  
“Fuckin’ synth sympathisers, the bunch of you,” Rhys grits out, more like he’s used to saying it than he’s participating in the present conversation.  
  
“We’d like a word, if you don’t mind, doc,” Nick says.  
  
Amari shrugs, returns to her terminal in the corner. “If you get permission from Hancock to finally shoot him, I’d like to do the honours,” she mutters.  
  
“Rhys, is it?” Nick asks as they approach the cot. Danse hovers a little ways away, probably wishing the ground would open up so he could fall into a nice earthy grave. “Nick Valentine. Just need to ask you a couple questions.”  
  
It takes a moment for Rhys to be able to focus on Nick’s face, but he tenses even more when he finally manages it, fists clenching. He attempts to roll away, but the cot’s pressed against the wall, so he doesn’t get very far.  
  
“Fuck you, synth. Get the fuck away from me.”  
  
“Easy now. We’re looking for one of your former colleagues. Scribe Haylen. Any ideas where we might be able to find her?”  
  
“Haylen’s dead,” Rhys snarls. “Probably. Best thing for her, anyway. Outed as a sympathiser. Got M7-97 a ticket out of his own execution. Got Maxson killed. Fuck-“  
  
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Nick asks, gesturing to the bandages. It’s a bit cruel, he knows, but the man’s growling at him like a rapid dog - cruelty isn't the last thing he deserves. “Things can get a whole lot worse for you, buddy. Just tell us where she is.”  
  
“How the fuck would I know, synth? She’s probably six feet under somewhere. Give it up.”  
  
Nick feels Danse step forward, feels that looming presence at his back and fears, just for a moment, that there’ll be a knife to accompany it. The other man just stands there, though, tall enough that Rhys can probably see him over Nick’s shoulder.  
  
“Rhys. I need to find her. Please. She saved my life.”  
  
“Ha!” Rhys bellows. “You haven’t got a life to save, Danse. Dirty synths like you aren’t alive. Fuckin’ traitor.”  
  
“I’m not a traitor!” Danse lets out. “I had no idea about my true origins. I swear to you. You really think I wanted to betray the Brotherhood, after all they did for me?"  
  
Although he probably _had_  betrayed them, of course, with every minute he spent ramming his hips into Hancock's backside, bruising bites to ghoul flesh. The mental image makes Nick shudder guiltily, imagining Hancock in the throes of his orgasm, Danse pushing him over the edge. Lamely, the man offers, "I never wanted any of this.”  
  
“Then why run?” The words come out laboured, twisted with pain, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in there as well. “Why not let Maxson put a bullet in your head, like you deserved? Like you all deserve?” He gesticulates wildly around the room, but Nick and Amari just exchange a wry smile and a shrug.  
  
“I… I was afraid. I didn’t want- I wasn’t ready for my existence to end. I should’ve stayed, I know. All of this could have been avoided if I’d gone to Maxson straight away. Haylen would’ve been safe. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Just tell me where she is. Please. You can put your own bullet in my skull as soon as I find Haylen, I swear it.”  
  
This startles Nick, but he has enough control over his facilities to school his expression into something resembling mild interest, entirely for the benefit of retaining an upper hand with the soldier in the cot. He watches Danse slump, shoulders falling. Defeated.  
  
“Alright. I just hope your word still means something,” Rhys says after a beat. “Last time I heard, she was out at the police station back in Cambridge. Holed up there like a molerat. She won’t last much longer though, not without supplies. Better get a move on, M7-97, before you have another death on your hands.”  
  
“Thank you,” Danse's breath escapes him in a rush. “I- thank you.”  
  
"Soon as you get back here, Danse, Haylen or no Haylen, I'm putting you down like the abomination you are. You have fair warning."  
  
"I understand," Danse says.  
  
And then he wavers, grasping the edge of the cot for support, and Nick thinks maybe Rhys had a switchblade or something hidden in his sleeve, because Danse is trembling like someone’s stabbed him, alright, and clutching at his thigh, and all the blood has drained from his face.

* * *

 

“Your leg,” Danse hears Valentine echo belatedly. “Amari?”  
  
She bustles over immediately, nudges Danse gently away from Rhys and into a chair. “You’re injured. Why didn’t you mention this before? I hope you weren’t thinking of trekking over to Cambridge in this state?”  
  
“I’m fine-“ Danse tries to insist, but she cuts him off.  
  
“This-” she gestures, “-is not fine. Trousers off, please. You’re going to get more blood on my floors, and it was hard enough to clean last time.”  
  
Danse doesn't have it in him to argue, but he can't imagine stripping off in front of a synth, especially not the synth who's fucking the same man as Danse. Amari's glowering at him though, and Danse can feel blood trickling down his calf and onto the old linoleum floor. The trousers are done for anyway. He undoes the belt, lets it fall with a clang and wriggles out of the slacks, grunting as the fabric scrapes against the bandages he's fixed to his thigh. They're stained through, dirty brown, so remarkably human looking that Danse almost forgets that he's not.  
  
"Good God," Amari mutters. "How long have you been walking around on this leg?"  
  
"It's not that bad," Danse insists. "Just a few days. I'm fine."  
  
"Hmm," she hums, reaching for a first aid kit abandoned on the desk. Scissors first, cutting away the dirty bandages, tossing them away without much care. Danse swears she peels off another layer of skin along with them. ”What happened?"  
  
“Got caught by a bullet. It was hardly worth mentioning.”  
  
"Good to know I got a shot in, at least!" Rhys hollers from the bed, although there’s hardly a chance the shot came from his rifle. Amari shoots him a steel-eyed glare, and Danse has a sudden memory of the Prydwen, Haylen in Rhys's lap after he tried to pinch her ass, giving him that same glare, calling him a _fucker_  without much malice.  
  
"This is no scrape. There's something embedded in there, pretty deep. Looks like debris might have ricocheted. It's infected."  
  
"He's a synth," Rhys points out. "Nothing human left to infect."  
  
"You have organic parts," Amari replies, rolling her eyes. "They're as prone to infection as any human is. I've worked with enough Gen-3s to understand how their physiology works."  
  
"We conducted extensive research in the Brotherhood-" Danse begins, and cuts off with a hiss of pain as Amari starts prodding at the wound.  
  
"I don't care what you think you found out, this is infected. You're lucky you won't lose the leg.” She turns her back on Danse to fumble with her tools, spread out on a desk, snaps a pair of tweezers in the air ominously. If it wasn’t for the steady amber eyes of Valentine, still watching him warily, Danse fears he’d shrink away from Amari’s incessant prodding. Her brusque movements aren’t dissimilar to Cade’s back on the Prydwen, but at least there it had only been the two men in the room, a nice layer of professionalism between them. Now there are two men who hate him watching him squirm, and Amari doesn’t seem particularly bothered who’s here while she works. Danse manages to steel himself against it all anyway, clutching the plush armrests of the chair he’s been manhandled into, breaths escaping through gritted teeth. He’s been through worse than this, he reminds himself. A lot worse.  
  
“Alright, brace yourself,” Amari mutters. “This metal’s gotta come out one way or another. You want Med-X before I start?”  
  
“No,” Danse grits out. He doesn’t want relief from it, wants the pain to crash over him like fresh air. Amari just shrugs, puts her weight on Danse’s leg to get better leverage, and goes to town with the tweezers.  
  
It burns like all hell, of course it does, and Danse lets out an involuntary whine, knuckles white against the chair arms. Amari doesn’t react, just burrows deeper with the damn tweezers, shimmies them around like they aren’t embedded into Danse’s flesh. One small sliver of curled iron plops onto the surgical tray by her elbow, and he foolishly thinks the process might be over.  
  
“One down, two to go,” she tells him, and the fantasy drifts away like hubflower seeds. “You want to reconsider on that Med-X?”  
  
_Yes, fuck yes_ , Danse thinks, but he shakes his head. If he opens his mouth it’ll only betray him, so he keeps his teeth clamped shut, hisses in breaths through his nose. He hears Rhys chuckle faintly from across the room, and wishes he’d taken the bullet.  
  
“Danse, you’re clearly in pain,” Valentine tries. Fucking voice of reason. Good thing Amari ignores him anyway, and the second piece of metal is out already.  
  
Danse nearly blacks out by the third one. His vision’s blurred at the edges, black stars clawing at the corners. A tunnel, he thinks blearily, leading him somewhere. Somewhere, anywhere. Just away. He can just about make out amber light at the end of it, and maybe he’s dying, finally-  
  
But the amber light is just the bright LED of Valentine’s eyes, peering down at him with an expression Danse would say is concern, or as close to it as a synthetic face can manage. “Danse, can you hear me?”  
  
“Mmm-hmm,” Danse mumbles. The pain ebbs away, only cloudy twinges of it reaching him through the new haze in his brain. “Peachy.”  
  
“Peachy, huh?” Valentine chuckles. “You’re on the good stuff, it’ll do that for ya.”  
  
“Huh?” Danse asks, and instantly forgets why. “Nick. Nick Valentine. I’m sorry I’m fucking Hancock.”  
  
There’s a yell from somewhere, but Danse doesn’t know where. Nick just laughs. Danse realises for the first time that he has a friendly face. The Institute had given him a friendly face. Odd. Did all Gen-2s have friendly faces? No, their eye sockets were too hollow. Perhaps that was it. “That’s alright," Valentine says.  
  
“And I’m sorry I called you an abomination. I called you a lot of things. Sorry.” His words are beginning to slur, sentences blending into one another, but the apology seems like it’s important, so he tries again, scrabbling for Nick’s silicon hand with one of Danse’s. Their fingers meet briefly before Valentine freezes, ready to draw his hand away, but Danse clings on. His hand is soft. "Thank you for helping.”  
  
And then he passes out for real.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for a) the delay on updates, and b) my constant adding of chapters to this fic. Chapter 5 will be the last, I promise! This just keeps getting longer and longer and sprawling away from me.

MacCready misses Little Lamplight.  
  
He’d always known it would be there, the longing for his childhood home. He’d grown up there, spent the formative years of his life in a position of relative authority with a cosy rocky ceiling over his head, only to have it stripped away in the real world, where the Gunners treated him like an insentient gun at best and a pack brahmin at worst. Leaving the caverns felt like being drenched in icy rad water. Big Town was so unbearable he skipped out after a few months and took Lucy with him - the Sentry bot on guard put him on edge instead of at ease. No telling when one of those machines is gonna turn its missiles on you.  
  
The Institute is something altogether different. Worse, of course, but also tucked nicely away underground like a vault or a cavern, only cleaner. And brighter. And with better food.  
  
As soon as he boards the elevator with Nora he feels a little safer. Which is stupid, of course - he’s descending into the territory of a power-crazy maniac and his army of synths, but still. There’s something about being underground that’s innately comforting, the proverbial foetal position.  
  
On the other hand, it’s much too bright. Mac has to shield his eyes the first time - the only time he’s seen fluorescents like these is in Diamond City market at night, and working lights there are spread so few and far between it’s hardly a problem. No broken lightbulbs here though.  
  
Heads swivel to stare at them approaching, synths freezing in sweeping or grass-trimming duties to take in the new arrival. Nora was probably one thing, but the grubby sniper with unwashed hair and clothes that haven’t seen water in- God, he doesn’t know - is another entirely. Mac takes off his hat to scrub a hand self-consciously through his hair, then at a bloodstain on his coat. Sh- crap. That’s not coming out without some good old pre-war detergent.  
  
“Relax,” Nora tells him, slipping her left hand into his right and giving it a squeeze. Easy for her to say. She's still in the habit of doing regular laundry.  
  
"Everything's so clean," he murmurs, hoping the nearby synths can't hear. Nora shrugs as the elevator doors swish open, starts to lead him by the hand through a neat lawn into more white corridors that make MacCready squint. God, how did people _see_  before the war? He can't imagine trying to fire on a target in this light.  
  
"Shaun just needs a list of symptoms," Nora says as they walk. "He said he'll have his people start work on synthesising a cure right away."  
  
"After you blow up the Brotherhood," Mac reminds her.  
  
"Well, once the Prydwen's out of the sky for good, yeah. How hard can it be?" This is accompanied by the most forced chuckle MacCready's ever heard, but he doesn't have time to comment because they're stepping through another set of double doors and up a flight of stairs and then there's Nora's sixty year old son, hair white at his temples and skin speckled with liver spots. He's turned away from them, facing a window that overlooks the plaza downstairs, but he swivels like he's expecting visitors.  
  
"Ah, mother. How lovely of you to drop by. And with your friend, too.”  
  
“Don’t pretend you weren’t expecting us,” Nora snaps. MacCready can’t help but think it might not be the best idea to rile the man, but who is he to talk about cussing out authority figures? His career in the Gunners wasn’t exactly a long string of _yes sirs_. He struggles to keep quiet now, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, and watches while Nora takes a step forward. She’s shaking, he can tell.  
  
“I’m here to discuss Duncan. Mac’s son. As you very well know.”  
  
“Yes, the dying boy. Of course.”  
  
The words deliver the same blow a knife might in different circumstances, but Mac doesn’t let it show on his face. Is this what it was like before the war, wars waged with words instead of bullets? Because he’d take a bullet any day.  
  
“You said you could cure him.”  
  
“Yes. I probably can. As long as you’re willing to hold up your end of the bargain. The Brotherhood need to be eliminated.”  
  
“They will be. But I want Duncan shipped out here before I so much as set foot onto airport soil. I’m guessing you have contacts for that kind of thing.”  
  
“Already being dealt with. He should be here in a couple of days.”  
  
“Wha- how?” The words slip free without Mac’s explicit say-so, and Shaun’s eyes swivel to focus on him, squinting slightly like he’s trying to discern what a dirty rat is suddenly doing in his squeaky clean office.  
  
“I have a lot of contacts, as mother very rightly pointed out. D.C. isn’t so far away. Your boy shouldn’t be long. And if you’ll provide our scientists with a list of symptoms prior to his arrival, the process should be sped up considerably.”  
  
“Yeah. I can do that,” Mac says, not surprised to find his voice thready. “High fever, and he’s throwing up all the time, and there are these boils-“  
  
“Not now. Write them down. I’ll have someone come by your room later.”  
  
“My… room?” he echoes, eyes finally trailing over to Nora, who looks equally confused.  
  
“Yes, we’ll provide you with quarters for the duration of your stay here. I presume you’ll want to spend some time with your boy.”  
  
“That’s…”  
  
“Yes, quite. Anyway, I’m sure you know I’m a busy man. Someone will come by to escort you to the surface tomorrow so you can complete your mission. Goodnight, mother.” With that, the man turns obnoxiously back to his window, taps a slender finger against the prickly white beard at his chin, and Mac feels Nora’s hand on his arm, towing him backwards.  
  
“We can’t stay here, Nora,” he hisses as soon as they’re out of earshot. They stop a little ways down the hall, and she swings to face him. “I can’t stay here. It’s too bright.”  
  
“I’m sure they have light-switches, Mac,” she says. “And Duncan will be here soon. Plus, it’s probably the safest we’re gonna get if the Brotherhood decide to retaliate.”  
  
She’s right, he knows she is. But there’s something tugging at the back of his mind like there are a thousand eyes on him - hell, there probably are - because Nora told him about all the cameras they had pre-war, and this place is crawling with synths, and-  
  
“Hey, sweetheart, calm down. It’s going to be okay. A few weeks at the most, right? We’ll get a room all to ourselves and tomorrow we can go pick up our stuff.”  
  
“Yeah,” he manages, trying to breathe normally. “Yeah. And Duncan’s gonna be okay.”  
  
“Duncan’s gonna be fine. But we have to stay put for now.”  
  
“Yeah. So let’s go christen our room, huh?”

* * *

 

When Danse wakes up, three stimpaks have been applied without his explicit consent, and his body feels like it’s been hit with an old world freight train. The last time he’d been subjected to strong painkillers was after he’d stepped on a mine. His power armour had taken the brunt of the explosion, but that didn’t mean the burns hurt any less. It’d taken him weeks to wean himself off the stuff - he doesn’t have weeks to spare this time.  
  
“Well, you’ll live,” Amari announces, swimming into view with a clipboard in hand. “A little scarring, and I’m betting a blow to your dignity, but you’re fine.”  
  
As soon as she utters the word _dignity_  it all comes flying back like the proverbial plasma grenade to the face. Christ. He’d tried to hold the synth’s _hand_.  
  
Danse glances around the room to look for him, but, thank Atom, Valentine’s nowhere to be seen. Rhys has passed out in his own cot, one arm still slung over his injuries, and Amari’s gaze is the only one to fall on him. Danse is grateful, needs the privacy to lick his wounds. Rhys’s words are still smarting.  
  
“Thank you,” Danse says. He can’t remember ever thanking so many people in the space of a day before, let alone so many people he’d once have sneered at and called abominations or sympathisers or worse.  
  
“Usually I’d ask for payment, but Nick told me you’re broke. Besides, I suppose wanting to rescue your friend is a noble enough goal. Just get out of here, and don’t spend too much time on that leg. Rest up where you can.”  
  
It doesn’t much matter how much time he spends on the leg, Danse thinks to himself as he eases out of the chair, if Rhys is going to shoot him at the end of it anyway. He doesn’t say it, though, just gives Amari a wobbly attempt at a smile. Another thing he misses about the Brotherhood - Danse would much rather snap off a salute than force reluctant facial muscles into submission. Saluting’s formal, it’s distant. Smiling implies a familiarity he isn’t comfortable with, but the woman’s probably saved his leg. He should at least attempt to look thankful.  
  
When he emerges from the Memory Den, freshly dressed in loose-fitting borrowed jeans, Hancock and Valentine are waiting for him out on the street. Danse feels his stomach flutter uncomfortably at seeing them both there, standing too close together for him to pretend they’re just colleagues, acquaintances through Nora. They’re both looking at him expectantly, like he’s just supposed to stride on over there and _chat_.  
  
“Hey, sunshine,” Hancock greets as he does exactly that. “How ya feeling? You know you shoulda told me you were hurt, right? If I’da known you were hiding away in the Rexford with an infected thigh I wouldn’t have listened to Nick’s advice to _give you space_.”  
  
“Hey! That would’ve been good advice, minus the grievous injury part.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Danse cuts in grudgingly. “I need to get going.”  
  
“Course. We’re ready when you are,” Hancock grins.  
  
“You’re not coming,” Danse says, although it should be obvious. Valentine’s held up his end of an extremely one-sided bargain - he has Haylen’s location, or a place to start looking, at least. He’s on his own from here on out.  
  
“Sure we are,” Hancock replies, that inane grin still fixed on his face. He looks stupidly handsome out here in the morning light, the sun not yet high enough to cast his entire face in shadow from that ridiculous tricorn hat. “You finally get to see me in action! Didn’t get much of a chance to watch while we were picking off your former compadres.”  
  
Holy fuck. The involuntary visual as he imagines Hancock swinging that shotgun in a wide arc, or the grace of his combat knife sliding into a raider’s gut makes his own clench in sympathy and arousal. Danse isn’t sure he’s entirely ready for that prospect, even in the face of his impending demise. He wonders if Hancock knows about his deal with Rhys, wonders if Valentine cared enough to tell him.  
  
He shouldn’t be thinking like this at all, not with Valentine in tow. He’d managed to get a hold of it all those lonely nights on the Prydwen, resisted slipping a hand into his boxers and grasping his cock at the thought of ghoul flesh against his, hadn’t imagined Hancock’s knife against the skin of his own neck with his fingers smearing pre-cum over his dick. Okay, well he _had_ , but not until he was safe under the cover of darkness and a heap of blankets in his cot. It’s worse now he knows how Valentine’s hand feels against his own - ghoul flesh is bad enough, Danse can do without the reminder of synthetic skin, too. He needs to get a handle on himself.  
  
“I can go alone,” he protests weakly anyway.  
  
“We’re your backup, alright? You can still take point on this one, big guy. You say jump, we ask how high, right?” Hancock's tone leaves no room for compromise, not that Danse had expected him to. He just nods, looping his thumbs into his jean pockets. Backup probably means a better shot at getting Haylen back safely. It's logical.  
  
"Affirmative," Danse mutters.  
  
They move out after detouring for Danse’s weapons, wading through Goodneighbor’s early afternoon crowds to shouts of admiration for their mayor, friendly greetings for Nick. Danse himself gets a wide berth, which he’s grateful for, and only one drifter calls him _Brotherhood scum_  as they leave the gates. It all feels oddly domestic, and it makes his skin itch.  
  
He gets his footing back once they’re outside the gates and he’s back in familiar territory, where ghouls and synths are met with derision at best and gunshots at worst. And now that Danse _is_  one of those synths - well, he said familiar, not ideal. It must show on his face, his secret, out there for anyone to read. He might as well have written _I’m a synth! Shoot here!_ on his forehead in permanent marker.  
  
They start trudging through the grimy backstreets of Boston, listening out for any stray super mutants or ferals headed their way. A little voice at the back of Danse’s mind is telling him that Valentine should be able to hear anything coming from a mile off, that the Institute probably programmed him with enhanced auditory input, but by that same logic wouldn’t Danse himself be able to hear any enemies scuttling over far walls or from gutted buildings? By that logic a lot of his old injuries would have been entirely avoidable. So he quiets the voice, grips his rifle harder in sweaty palms and forces one foot in front of the other.  
  
A few times Hancock stutters to a halt and gestures for them to keep quiet, presses his back to a wall and peers around the corner, but apart from a rabid mutt and a couple of molerats, they don’t encounter anything sinister until they’re by Diamond City, and Danse finally gets to watch Hancock dispense with a pack of raiders without breaking a sweat. Danse barely gets a shot in before they’re on the ground in pools of their own blood, and he senses rather than sees Valentine’s synthetic smirk.  
  
It’s incredibly strange, Danse thinks, to share his lover with another syn- man. He never had that to worry about in his past brief liaisons, mutual handjobs in the showers or a quick fuck in his cabin with the lights out. All years ago now. But now he’s acutely aware that Valentine is also very much enjoying watching Hancock gut a man with that sharp blade, or leaping, graceful as anything, off a low wall to take a feral by surprise. There’s an undercurrent of something else there though, a wistfulness. A longing. He wonders what Valentine could possibly be longing for.  
  
It’s dark by the time they reach the river. Valentine suggests hunkering down for the night - they won’t get much done in this light, anyway, and they’ll be free game for muties across the bank. They stop to rest in an old store so Hancock and Danse can inhale some brahmin jerky, light up some candles to play gentle shadows across the walls, and find an old radio to hook up for quiet music and news updates. And, when Hancock stops puffing Jet long enough to go outside for a cigarette, Danse finds that Valentine is well prepared for an ambush.  
  
“So. Danse.”  
  
Here it comes. The consequence of his earlier hand-holding hysteria. Danse half wishes he’d accepted the smoke from Hancock. It’s not exactly like lung cancer’s much of a worry anymore. Danse curses himself for being a prude, a lightweight, a _fucking pussy_ , as Rhys used to call him, before he thought up worse things.  
  
“About before.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” The words come out of him in a rush, an embarrassing echo of earlier, and Danse wants to slap a hand across his own mouth to stifle them. “I can’t imagine you welcomed my outburst. Or my touching your hand. I- I wasn’t in my right mind.”  
  
“What?” Nick looks completely confused, or as confused as a synthetic face can manage, anyway. He chuckles a bit, darkly. “You don’t need to apologise for that, Danse. I know you wouldn’t wanna touch me with a ten foot pole without a gallon of Med-X in your system.” He chuckles warily, and Danse swears he sees him edge a little further away in the dim candlelight. “No, I meant… your deal with Rhys.”  
  
“Oh. That.”  
  
“Yeah, that. Did’ya mean it?” Valentine sounds almost gruff, like he’s embarrassed to be asking. Danse watches his metal hand toy with his cigarette lighter, wonders what the old synth gets from nicotine anyway.  
  
“Of course I meant it. As soon as I get back.” That gives him what, two days, max? Maybe two nights of restless slumber, of candlelight flickering across Hancock’s back and his arm over his waist, of the whir of Valentine’s internal fans behind him? “You’ll be glad to be rid of me, I assume.”  
  
“How many times do I have to say it? I don’t got anything against ya, Danse. As long as you don’t hurt Hancock, we don’t have a problem.”  
  
“But I’m sleeping with him! Behind your back, for months! I treated you both like shit - like worse than shit, like radioactive shit - and I still call you a _dirty synth_  in my head and I’m still not completely convinced you aren’t an Institute spy and I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling guilty every time Hancock touches me! So there. I’m the worst kind of hypocrite. I deserve a lot worse than Rhys’s bullet in my brain.”  
  
“And yet you’re still here. With the two of us. Actively trying not to call us names that they’ve conditioned into you. Caring about John. I saw you, before, when he almost got brained by that psycho in the ski mask.”  
  
Danse had almost forgotten. He’s so used to caring now that the instinct is always there, tucked at the back of his brain, but he hardly thought the sy- thought Nick would notice, thought he’d gotten good enough at hiding it. He’d seen the sledgehammer coming towards Hancock from the corner of his eye, swung in a frantic arc. The raider was already bleeding from her stomach and head, and her arms were shaking from exertion as she tried to bring the weapon down, and Danse had just been about to call out when Hancock noticed her and swung around, his own shotgun cocked and fired into her chest. It had taken five minutes for Danse’s heartbeat to relearn a regular pattern.  
  
“I do care about him. Which is why this is better in the long run. He deserves better. You’re good for him.” The words are stilted, difficult to choke out, but they’re true. Danse feels them in his core.  
  
“You can be good for him too. You have been. Look, you don’t owe those Brotherhood fellas anything. They’re the ones who tossed you and your friend out, the ones who tried to have you assassinated. I just want you to know that John and I will protect you from whatever, if it’s the repercussions you’re worried about. We’ve had a lot of practice.”  
  
“Thank you,” Danse says, honestly. He doesn’t quite want to know what _practice_  entailed. “But I owe this to Rhys. To Maxson. I know how ridiculous it sounds, but he was… an admirable leader. The Brotherhood owe him a lot. Just… don’t tell Hancock. Please. He’d try to stop me.”  
  
“I’m not entirely sold on not trying to stop you myself, yet. But it’s your decision, I suppose. A stupid one, but your call to make.”  
  
Hancock slips back inside before they can say more, and Danse watches him retrieve blankets from his pack before he flops back down in between them. “You two gettin’ along like a house on fire, huh?”  
  
“Sure,” Nick says. “If the fire was destroying everything in its path and suffocating all the residents.” But he winks at Danse as Hancock arranges himself on his back, and Danse feels warmth trickle over him.  
  
“It’s fucking freezing in here,” Hancock says, although he knows that both Danse and Valentine are well aware that ghouls run hot. “Y’know, I read somewhere that dogs huddle up together for warmth.”  
  
“There are quicker ways to ask for a cuddle, doll,” Valentine snorts, but he lies down at Hancock’s other side anyway, drapes his good arm across his waist. Danse stiffens, fidgeting with the hem of his own ratty blanket, and then excuses himself to go and relieve his bladder. It’s colder still outside and Danse really doesn’t need to piss all that badly, but he finds an alcove to unzip in anyway because he can’t stand going back there and watching their easy affection. And what should he do, while Hancock and Valentine cosy up together? Take his blanket and go face the wall like a dog? Offer to take watch? He probably doesn’t need the sleep all that much, being… what he is now.  
  
He goes back inside eventually, because he has to. They’ve extinguished all but one candle and Valentine is spooned up against Hancock’s back under the covers. Danse returns to his original spot, tugs the blanket up to his chin, forces himself to lie down. He can feel their eyes on him in the semi-darkness.  
  
“Aren’t ya gonna join us, sunshine?” Hancock asks, voice gravelly from almost sleep, and beckons him closer with a crooked finger. Valentine’s gaze is appraising, stifling, and Danse’s feet are numb with cold.  
  
“I don’t think…” he protests, weakly. “I’m fine over here.” He can’t remember ever feeling this flustered in all his life.  
  
“C’mon,” Hancock urges. “I missed ya.”  
  
That’s enough, somehow. Danse shuffles his way toward them in the dim light, plumps his pack into a makeshift pillow, flops so Hancock can arrange his body around him. Danse arranges his free arm over the other man under the blankets, feels the faint warmth in his stomach intensify.  
  
“Shouldn’t one of us keep watch?” he asks, for something to fill the silence, and just as the words come out Hancock shifts, driving warmth closer to Danse’s abdomen. He shivers.  
  
“I don’t sleep,” Nick offers. “If there’s trouble, I’ll wake you.”  
  
“You don’t sleep at all?”  
  
“Not really. I can fall into a doze if I really set my mind to it, but it’s more like a temporary power down than anything close to real sleep. You’re plenty safe, Danse, don’t worry.”  
  
“I wasn’t worried,” Danse says, and has to stifle a yawn. “Just curious.” He slips one hand free of the covers, suddenly too hot, and it brushes Nick’s where they’re both strewn over the furnace of Hancock’s body. He feels the synth start to draw away, and gently catches his fingers in his own. Amber eyes flash open in surprise, but Nick doesn’t try to wriggle them away.  
  
“G’night, Danse,” Hancock breathes, snuffling a kiss in the vicinity of Danse’s lips. “Night, Nicky.” And they fall asleep like that, pressed together. Still warm.

* * *

 

When Danse wakes from the best sleep he's had in a long time, Valentine is gone and Hancock's already up, Jet inhaler in hand. He's only half dressed, the white dress shirt billowing open as he paces the room, trousers on but no belt. His coat and hat are still slung across the room where he left them last night, and his feet are bare. Danse can see he's missing two toes, and realises this is the first time he's seen the other man so unselfconsciously bare.  
  
"Morning," Hancock croaks, sensing Danse struggling out of his mound of blankets. "Gotta say, really enjoyed being soothed to sleep by your hog snoring last night. Never pegged you as a snorer."  
  
“I’m not," Danse protests, because it feels right, and then he's out of the covers for real and sidling to Hancock's side, slipping an arm around his warm waist. To his credit, Hancock only shrinks away a little, one hand going to do up the buttons of his shirt.  
  
“Where’s the sy- Where’s Valentine?” Danse manages, thrown by Hancock’s sudden reluctance. Has he done something wrong? Does he know about his deal with Rhys?  
  
“He’s gone to scout ahead. Said he heard trouble brewin’ a little ways away.” The shirt’s buttoned up all the way now, and Hancock finally allows himself to be kissed gently on half lips. It isn't nearly enough. Danse goes to deepen the kiss, his tongue already tracing the outline of Hancock's closed mouth, trying to get inside. Images swell to the forefront of Danse's base brain - Hancock emptying bullets into a group of approaching raiders; Danse's own fingers prying his ass-cheeks apart; Hancock on all fours on the bed, begging for it. Danse's cock twitches at the memory. He needs...  
  
"Morning, fellas."  
  
Danse lets out a breath, steps back from his lover at the sight of Valentine coming in through the broken door. Is this what it's going to be like now until his racing, desperate thoughts are silenced by Rhys's bullet? All stilted conversation and interrupted kisses that should lead to more?  
  
"Bastards are all taken care of. Looks safe to forge ahead."  
  
Hancock greets Nick with a smile and a peck on the cheek while Danse busies himself with tossing their things back into their packs. It's fine. He'll carve out some alone time with Hancock before he goes to meet Knight Rhys. He has time.  
  
"Ready to head out?" Valentine asks, pistol already drawn. "How's the leg holdin' up?" Funny, how he really sounds concerned.  
  
“It’s fine. No issues to report.”  
  
The formality makes the two of them grin, and Danse feels a furious blush light his cheeks. For the most part, when it was just him and Hancock, he could pretend he wasn’t so out of his depth. Now they’re both here, and Brotherhood regs are so far from their field of experience that Danse is the outsider, the freak. The abomination, in more ways than one. But it’s like a tap he can’t turn off, Maxson’s voice still hissing at the back of his mind.  
  
Still. Not long to go now.  
  
“You’re both clear on the plan?” Danse confirms as they head outside into the sunlight. Boston’s already starting to heat up under the early morning sun, and it rises off the metal structures around them, trapping the three of them in a tight wall of broiling humidity. “You two man the perimeter while I infiltrate the police station and search for Haylen. Once I find her-“ _Once_ , not _if_  “-I’ll brief her on the situation as it stands. If there are hostiles, leave me to defuse the situation unless the station’s swarmed. I’d like to avoid violence against my former brothers and sisters if possible.”  
  
“Like we said, it’s up to you how we play this,” Hancock says. “But let’s just say it wouldn’t be a crushing disappointment if we can’t find a _non-violent_  solution. My trigger finger’s itchin’ for a little Brotherhood blood.”  
  
“Hancock-“ Danse begins to warn, but the other man cuts him off before he can finish.  
  
“I know, I know. Ad victoriam, etcetera.” Hancock tosses out a lazy mock-salute, making Valentine laugh. “Biggest load of bullshit this side of the NCR, if you ask me.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Danse grits out, but his tone isn’t even half as angry as he wants it to be. “And, for your information, the Brotherhood of Steel are far superior to anything California spits out.”  
  
Hancock erupts with laughter at this, the sound startling a few birds from a nearby tree. “Either way, I wouldn’t say no to the sight of you in a red beret.”  
  
Danse makes a swipe for Hancock’s shoulder but the other man dodges gracefully out of the way, so his swat makes contact with Valentine’s instead. There’s a moment of crushing embarrassment before Danse forcibly clears his throat, determined to be _better_. “It’d clash with my armour,” is all he says, crumpling Hancock at the waist. They’re laughing all the way to Cambridge.  
  
Their light conversation abruptly cuts off as soon as the police station’s in sight. Danse gestures for them to keep low, edges around the cover of a small brick wall to get a good view of the building beyond. There are no enemy forces in sight, but turrets have been set up along the perimeter.  
  
“Shit,” Hancock curses. “There’s no way you’ll get past them without letting anyone know we’re here.”  
  
“Hopefully the defences are Haylen’s,” Danse replies, although he’s thinking the same thing - what if they’re not? “We’ll have to take them out from back here.” He hasn’t brought a scoped rifle so his own will have to do - a failure on his part, but his mind had been on other things.  
  
Danse lines up his first shot, feels Hancock and Valentine do the same on either side of him. If they aim well enough, the three turrets should be taken out with minimal gunfire. He’s seen Hancock shoot, knows he can probably disable the eastern one with a single bullet, but Valentine’s been using a crummy pistol, and while it’s served him fine so far-  
  
The men beside him take the shot, and their turrets explode in a quick breath of flames. Danse belatedly pulls the trigger on his own rifle, impressed and refusing to show it, and the middle one lights up like candles on a cake.  
  
“Okay. I’m going inside. Wait here, yell if there’s trouble.” He scrambles to a standing position and starts sprinting for the doors, just in case there are additional defences he missed, keeping his eyes peeled for tripwires. He makes it inside without incident, catches himself on the doorjamb, spins around in search of his friend.  
  
“Danse?”  
  
Haylen’s voice comes from the main room, and Danse turns to see her squatting beside a rudimentary cooking station, stirring a pot of something that looks like stew. She peers up at him in surprise.  
  
“Haylen. You’re alive.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
She looks _healthy_. She’s wearing wastelander’s garb - jeans and an oversized shirt - and there are no visible wounds on show; she isn’t rake thin from starvation or twitching from too many chems. Better yet, she’s smiling, her cheeks glowing with happy alarm. Danse feels like an idiot for ever doubting her. “I thought… Maxson told me you’d been banished. I thought you were dead.”  
  
“What, thought I couldn’t survive without the Brotherhood at my back?” Haylen smirks, moving to stand. “I figured you’d know where to find me if I holed up here, at least. In case you needed to. Are you alone?”  
  
“Uh, n-no.”  
  
“Is the ghoul here?” There’s still a trace of a grin twitching at Haylen’s lips, and she steps closer with a hand outstretched to touch his elbow gently.  
  
“He’s outside. The synth, too.”  
  
“Wow. You’ve really been making friends, huh?”  
  
“That’s one way of putting it.”  
  
She really laughs at that, throwing her head back and letting her hair fall about her shoulders. Danse has rarely seen Haylen out of her scribe uniform, and looking at her red curls exploding around her head, he almost doesn’t recognise her.  
  
“How have you been holding up, Pala- Danse?” Haylen flushes scarlet at the slip, averts her gaze to the grimy linoleum floor. “After everything?”  
  
“Maxson’s dead,” Danse blurts. The words feel like a dam breaking, and Haylen’s eyes widen further in shock. “He came to Goodneighbor with backup. He wanted me assassinated, threatened the settlement. Hancock… carried out his mayoral duties, I guess.”  
  
“That’s… I mean, I can’t exactly say I’m sad about it, but, Christ, Danse, that’s…”  
  
“Indeed. He’ll be missed.”  
  
“Well, not by me. Really, Danse, after everything? You know you didn’t deserve this, and I don’t think I did either. Loyalty meant nothing to Maxson. He might have felt he was acting in the Brotherhood’s best interests, but to attempt to execute one of his best paladins? To banish me for protecting you?” Haylen sighs, scrubs a hand through her hair. “Was anyone else hurt in the fight?”  
  
“Everyone except Knight Rhys fell in battle.”  
  
“ _Shit_ , Rhys was there? I always knew I was too good for that bastard. Where is he now?”  
  
“He’s receiving medical care in Goodneighbor. He’ll heal.” Danse can’t tell her more, can’t force the words past the lump in his throat. Haylen must sense it - she reads him better than anyone else he knows - but she doesn’t press.  
  
“You should return with us. If you want to, of course. Hancock’s promised to provide accommodation, and despite its reputation, Goodneighbor isn’t truly all that bad. Or if you’d rather go to Diamond City, we can escort you.”  
  
“I don’t need escorting, Danse. I’m sure I could make it there by myself if I needed to. Truth is, I’m only here ‘cause I was waiting for you to show up. Figured you’d need a friend after everything, but seems like you’ve got your own ragtag crew at your back now.”  
  
“There’s always room for a little one,” Danse replies with a smirk of his own, reaching to clap Haylen on the shoulder. “And I’m well aware you could make it alone, Scri- Haylen.” They both exhale simultaneously.  
  
“That’s going to take a while to get used to, huh?” Haylen asks, and casts a tired look around the room. “Well, I don’t see much point in hanging around here much longer, anyway. I’ll head back to Goodneighbor with you guys, see where the road takes me after that. If being a scribe for so long taught me one thing, it’s that hiding behind technical documents and research hardly prepares you for the Commonwealth in all its glory. I want to see the world at long last. Besides, I can’t wait to finally meet this boyfriend of yours, Danse.”  
  
“He’s not…” Danse begins, then trails off. He’s not really in a place to deny it anymore, is he? “Very well.”  
  
Danse helps Haylen gather her things, distributing the fresh stew into tin trays siphoned from a Brotherhood ration pack. She doesn’t have much - a few spare shirts, dried food packets, her rifle, underwear that she quickly folds out of Danse’s line of sight. When she’s finished, standing in the debris of her new life with a pack slung over her shoulder, Haylen tips her head up to look Danse in the eye.  
  
“Thanks, y’know. For coming to my rescue.” Her resulting grin is infectious, and Danse realises for the first time how much he really did miss her.  
  
“Well, next time I’ll leave it to chance, shall I? Just don’t come complaining to me if a feral tears your arms off and eats them in front of you.”  
  
“Have you ever actually seen a feral eat someone?” a gruff voice in the doorway asks, and Danse turns abruptly to find Hancock leaning casually against the frame, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Usually you just get scratched to death.”  
  
“Haylen, this is…”  
  
“Mayor Hancock, right? I’ve heard… well, not that much about you, to be honest. But rumours fly aboard the Prydwen, isn’t that right, Danse?”  
  
“Sexy king of the zombies, at your service,” Hancock greets, sinking into a deep bow which startles a giggle out of Haylen. When he straightens up again he’s still smiling, but there’s something hard glinting behind his eyes that Danse can’t quite place. “You two lovebirds ready to ship out? Only time’s ticking, and I’d rather be back in town by nightfall. Understandable if you need a little… private time to catch up, though. I’m sure Danse has a lot to fill you in on.”  
  
“We’re ready,” Danse says, struggling to identify whatever’s lurking beneath Hancock’s forcibly light tone. When he steps closer, he lowers his voice to hiss, “Are you alright?”  
  
“Oh, I’m good, sunshine. I’m doin’ just dandy.” He retreats before Danse can say another word, before he can draw an arm around his shoulder and pull him closer, try out some of that easy affection that seems to come so naturally to the ghoul. Danse tries to be content with stepping out into the real sunshine, ignoring the dark blob of the Prydwen hovering overhead as he glimpses Valentine standing in the driveway smoking, hat in hand, staring out at the river. Hancock’s gone to stand beside him, shoulders set in a furious line, and they cast long shadows across the gravel.  
  
Danse’s own shadow looms ominously as he stomps over to the pair, wishing for once that he was back in his power armour, enough to draw Hancock’s attention. He feels Haylen hesitate behind him but can’t bring himself to care, just takes his lover by the shoulder and spins him around, forcing him to look Danse in the face.  
  
“What is it? What have I done?” Because he’s fucked up again, without quite knowing why, and there’s so little time left that he can’t bear to have Hancock mad at him, not if the other man wants them back in Goodneighbor by nightfall. He’d really managed to convince himself that he had longer.  
  
“You ain’t done nothing, Danse,” Hancock mutters, but now Valentine’s squinting curiously at them both and Haylen looks like she doesn’t know quite what to do with herself, hovering awkwardly to their right, pretending to survey the area. “Unless I missed something pretty explosive in there, anyway.”  
  
“Missed… what? What are you talking about?” Danse is baffled, feels it tugging his eyebrows into a furrow. One of his hands scrabbles a bit too desperately for Hancock’s, feeling like if he can just tangle their fingers together somehow this will all be okay again, but the ghoul snatches his hand away. “Please. Talk to me.”  
  
Hancock sighs heavily, whips the tricorn off his head and scrubs at his eyes with the back of a wrist. “I don’t know what’s up with me, sunshine. I ain’t usually this jealous. Heh, you always did bring out the worst in me.”  
  
“Jealous? I don’t-“  
  
“Look, all I’m sayin’ is I’d understand if you two were… Well. I don’t exactly need a mirror to play spot-the-difference, huh?”  
  
“Hancock-“  
  
“Wait. You really thought there was something between me and Danse?” Haylen pipes up, trailing closer to stand in their sightline. “Guy was always too worried about breaking frat regs. And besides, I’ve decided Brotherhood - or ex-Brotherhood - isn’t really my type. No offence, big guy,” she offers with a wink.  
  
“Haylen, I don’t-“  
  
“See? Poor thing’s clueless. I’m amazed the two of you got your shit together enough to be standing in front of me, to be honest. But… I’m glad you did. You really seem to make him happy.” The words are delivered awkwardly, but Danse feels gratitude swell in his chest when Hancock’s fingers finally squeeze around his own. Haylen’s gaze is the slightest bit uncertain when it flickers to their joined hands, but she puts on a brave smile anyway, pats Danse lightly on the back.  
  
Everything’s perfect for a glorious minute.  
  
And then the sound of a huge explosion rips past them, sending them sprawling into defensive positions on the gravel floor, as the Prydwen is blasted out of the sky.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!!!!
> 
> I'm so so so sorry that this took so long - I've started working full-time and it's killing me quickly. But here is the final chapter with my heart and soul attached. This one really got away from me, and took a really unexpected direction, and I kind of feel like there's bits of me strewn inside it. 
> 
> Enjoy! I have one last instalment to this series planned out and then if anyone's still actually reading after that ONE MORE! But yeah, just tell me if you'd like me to shut up now and I swear I will end this <3

“I fold.

“I fold also.”

“And me.”

MacCready looks around the table with something that feels like dissatisfaction, which is ridiculous since he just won the fifth hand in a row. He reaches out to scoop the small pile of caps gathered in the centre, rolls his eyes at the white blank stares he gets in return. “Look, there’s just no teaching you guys. Which is crazy, since you have the best poker faces on the planet.”

The gathered synths just stare back at him. He’s spent the last five hours trying to teach them how to play cards with a deck stolen from one of the scientists - Cheat had been a no-go, for obvious reasons, and he’d had high hopes for poker, but though they grasped the rules pretty fast, their bluffing left a lot to be desired, and most of ‘em ended up announcing their hand within the first five minutes of the game.

“Tomorrow we try caravan,” he tells them, stuffing the caps into his pockets and scraping his chair back. Winning’s no fun when there’s no sport involved, and besides, they were all his caps to begin with. Maybe they’ll be better at strategy.

When Mac gets back to the room he shares with Nora - a long traipse down bright corridors that still make him squint, a left turn at the synths sweeping clean floors and an upward climb around the couple fixing still-functioning pipes - he has to scrub at his eyes, blindly fumbling for the dimmer switch and flopping down on their pretty plump couch. He tugs his hat further over his face. They’d given him some new clothes, all wrapped up in laundered bundles in a flashy cabinet with automatic doors, but the cream sweaters and slacks made him look like an ugly pillow, and the starch felt weird against his skin, newly showered as it was.

It’s been four days, and there’s still no sign of Duncan.

Nora comes streaming in while MacCready still has his eyes squeezed shut, dumps herself down beside him with a world-weary sigh. “No luck?”

“No,” she mutters, scrubbing a hand through her own hair. Since they came down here she’s taken to wearing makeup again, and a faint outline of blush dapples her cheekbones, painting her rosy in the dim light. Her lips look too dark and there’s mascara clumped to her eyelashes. Even Nora’s hair smells different since she started using shampoo again. “All he’ll say is Duncan’s on his way. How long can it realistically take to fly here?”

“Not this long,” Mac guesses, his knee twitching without his say-so. Four days is too long, even from D.C., even with two-hundred year old vertibirds. “Maybe they ran out of fuel.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I dropped off that list of symptoms. Shaun said he’d get his people on it ASAP.” She hasn’t asked any questions about why she had to write it for him. Hopefully she blames it on the lighting-induced migraines. “You keeping busy?”

“Subtle,” he tells her, because she’s transparent like that sometimes. “Tried teaching the synths to play poker. Went about as well as you’d expect.”

“And that’s coming from you, someone who can’t play poker for shit,” she snorts, and he hits her with a cushion. It’s nice, the way she leans over him still laughing, how she draws their lips gently together, but what’s less nice is how her soft hair trails across his neck so he can’t forget where they are. He has to draw away too soon, before she can tow him through to their comfortable bedroom with its Queen bed and too many throw pillows.

Who the f- hell has throw pillows anymore?

She doesn’t take offence, brushes it off when he apologises. “You’re not in the mood. It’s fine. It happens,” is all she’ll say, and she tucks her head into his lap and grabs a folder from where she has a stack of ‘em piled up on the floor. Only damn mess MacCready’s seen in this place.

“Whatcha reading?” he wonders while she flips it open. Nora angles the folder so he can see it, and Mac has to opt for a knowing ‘ah’ and a lazy grin.

“It’s a study Shaun published. The effects of electrical stimulation on the synthetic brain, stress factors and the artificial amygdala. About the only thing I could find in this hellhole,” she explains while she reads, one of her hands absently going to scratch lightly around Mac’s kneecap. At least he’d allowed his pants to be washed.

He never used to feel this self-conscious around her.

“Sounds boring,” he notes. The scratching really does feel nice, though, so he lets her carry on, rests his head on the backrest of the couch and dozes.

When he wakes up maybe he’ll get to see his son.

* * *

 

Goodneighbor is still standing when they get back.

Danse doesn’t know what he was expecting. Place is like a damn radroach. Just keeps on crawling right on through the fallout.

The explosion’s still ringing in his ears after the better part of a day. Haylen’s, too, probably, because she keeps scrubbing at the side of her face with an open palm, a frown etched into her brow. Right after, when Danse had stood on unsteady legs and detached himself from Hancock, she’d squeezed his hand so tight his synthetic bones ached, and he hadn’t let her go.

“You two need some time?” Hancock asks quietly once they reach the Old State House. Valentine hovers awkwardly to the side for a minute before he goes off to light a cigarette he probably doesn’t taste, and Danse wants anything but to be alone with Haylen, who can’t even look him in the eye anymore. Like all of this is his fault.

And who knows, maybe it is. Maybe with Maxson onboard all of this could have been avoided, maybe the sentries would have been on higher alert-

Danse brings a hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache already forming behind his eyes. His bad leg is already aching from the hike, and when he closes his eyes he can still see flames and warped metal raining from the sky. The last thing he feels like doing is facing Rhys, telling him that his brothers and sisters have all met their fiery end.

Truth be told, he’d just like Hancock to take him in his arms again and tell him everything is going to be okay, even if it’s a lie.

“C’mon, Danse,” his partner mutters, and Danse belatedly registers a warm hold in the crook of his elbow. “Might as well find your friend someplace to set up camp inside, yeah?”

That the ghoul knows him so well shouldn’t keep catching him off-guard like this, but each time it still manages to astonish Danse how obvious he must be to outsiders. Hancock knows that having clear steps to follow puts him at ease, knows that he’d rather concentrate on anyone but himself right now. Even knows just the right amount of pressure to exert on Danse’s arm, puts a hand between his shoulder blades to steer him forward, keep him calm.

Danse doesn’t deserve it, but he appreciates it all the same. Slips a hand back into Hancock’s while they walk, and sticks close to him while they settle Haylen in a sleeping bag with a hot bowl of radstag stew because the warmth of another body against his won’t be there much longer. Only the bite of steel and a man who hates him for what he can’t change.

“You’ll be alright,” Hancock murmurs into his ear. “I’ll be right outside with Nick if you need me. Just looks like the two of you could do with a chat with someone who understands, yeah?”

Danse manages a nod, and watches him leave for the staircase. They’re at the very top of the Old State House, above Hancock’s quarters, and maybe if Danse strains hard enough in the crushing silence he’ll be able to make out what they’re saying without him there.

“Everyone’s gone, Danse,” Haylen echoes, snapping him back to the present. Danse eases himself down onto the floor beside her, draws his knees to his chest. Haylen’s hand has gone limp around her spoon. “Ingram. Kells. Quinlan. And the ship. Maxson. It’s all gone.”

She’s silent for a moment, and Danse doesn’t know what he can say. The headache pulses low in his neck, arcing up to the crown of his skull and branching behind his eyes, so he’s grateful when Haylen speaks again, voice low. “Y’know, when I first joined the Brotherhood, I just wanted to get away from my real life. I saw it as an easy out - a way to see something beyond my parents’ shack in the Capital Wasteland. They loved me, I know they did, but they were just farmers, they never saw anything beyond crops and rations, and they were so scared of everything. Raiders, ferals, super mutants. Anything that threatened the farm. I guess I wanted to ease that fear for them a little, but I also… I just never wanted to see those tin walls again.”

“It doesn’t matter why you joined, Haylen. Just that you did. We were both part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s what’s important,” Danse tells her, thinking of Cutler’s grin, how his eyes had lit with mirth when he suggested seeing if the tin cans would let them play around with power armour. Danse would have followed him anywhere.

“When I first came onboard the Prydwen, I was afraid to blink in case it all disappeared around me. The flight up there was the first time I’d ever been in a vertibird. I thought it was crazy that they’d decide to build a fortress in the sky, when it could all come crashing down around them. Rhys had already gone off to supervise some other initiates, so Ingram had to show me where I was supposed to sleep and put my stuff. She must’ve seen I was trembling, ‘cause she told me that when she first signed up she stayed awake three nights waiting for the engines to give out and dump them in the sea. And now she’s gone, Danse.”

“We’re still here,” Danse tells her, firm as he can manage. “Our- their patrols are scattered across the Commonwealth. A few soldiers will have survived - they can report back to the Citadel, send for reinforcements-“

“Hardly anyone will have been out after Maxson’s death. Isn’t it protocol to report back to base in an emergency? Everyone will have been back at the airport at least, and the ship was blasted out of the sky, they’ll have been caught in the debris-“

Danse sighs. He already knows all of this, of course, but he wants her to feel better. No point in Haylen feeling guilty when he’s already shouldering enough for two. “Rhys is in Goodneighbor. If it’d make you feel better to see him.”

“He tried to kill you,” Haylen whispers. “They tossed us both out like garbage, Danse. And now we’re stuck here mourning for them - how is that fair?” She drags a hand through her red hair, blinks bloodshot eyes up at Danse like he might have the answers. All he can do is tug her closer to his chest, let her cry into his shirt, and pretend not to be offended that she looks shocked at the gesture.

“I… made a deal with Rhys. I wasn’t going to say, but you deserve to know,” he says haltingly. “I said I’d let him finish the job if he told me where you were. I’m supposed to meet him today.”

She doesn’t answer him. Doesn’t pull away, either, and when he tilts his head to watch her she has her eyes open unseeingly, lips mouthing around words he can’t hear. Her hand is trapped against both their bodies, up by her shoulder, and her fingers close around the fabric of his shirt. “I’m not going to let you do that,” she manages out loud.

“It’s already settled. I owe it to the Brotherhood, but that’s not why I agreed, Haylen. I thought you were in danger. A few weeks ago I would have gladly given my life for any of my brothers and sisters, but you stuck with me through everything, even when you didn’t understand it. Now I’d give my life for you, Haylen -not because you were under my command, but because you’re my friend.”

“You’re insane,” she whispers. “Your b- Hancock won’t forgive you for that.”

“He doesn’t need to forgive me. There’s too much for anyone to forgive.” It’s the truth, Danse knows. Even if it makes something below his sternum ache with phantom pain. “I don’t want to add to your burden, Haylen. Just please know that I made the right decision, even if you don’t agree with me.”

Haylen understands loyalty. Understands following orders even when you don’t see the logic behind them, even if that means running in front of a bullet with someone else’s name on. So she doesn’t speak when Danse levers himself up, just watches him with hollow eyes, lets him go. He’s grateful for that.

* * *

 

Hancock’s waiting for him downstairs. Valentine’s still smoking on the couch, watching them both warily, but Danse steps inside without sparing him a second glance, strides over to the ghoul and tugs him close into a nearly frantic kiss.

“Everything okay?” he asks, feeling Hancock nod against him. Danse draws his hands up his back, sneaks them under the heavy material of his frock coat so he can feel mottled skin through the thin shirt. “Haylen’s getting settled upstairs. Thank you, both of you, for coming with me. I’m glad you did.”

“Never thought I’d hear those words come outta your mouth again, Danse,” Nick says wryly. Danse buries his face into Hancock’s neck and selfishly wishes they were alone.

“So everything’s peachy, huh?” Hancock asks, and there’s an edge to his voice that Danse doesn’t like. “We got your friend back, nobody’s on your tail anymore. We can all just relax, yeah?”

“... Yeah.“

“Only it looks like you’ve got one more loose end to tie up, huh Danse? Unless you forgot, after your fancy airship went kaboom. Understandable, I guess.” The words hit Danse hard in the gut and he yanks himself away from Hancock, eyebrows tugging into a familiar frown. The ghoul’s just staring at him, jaw set.

“Valentine told you,” Danse breathes. He should’ve known. He shouldn’t have left them alone.

“Sorry, buddy,” Nick hollers, a smile daring to spread across his synthetic features. It makes Danse furious, sends him spiralling back in time, and the synth’s just a synth and the ghoul’s just a ghoul, staring him down with fury painting his black eyes feral. A spike of fear dashed with arousal hits Danse at the sight, and he’s disgusted with himself all over again.

“Maybe it’s better that I get this out of the way, then,” he mutters, meaning it. His stomach tightens at the thought of gunmetal jammed against his forehead, stone floor cold against his knees, his bad leg protesting at the strain. Whichever path he chooses, it always comes back to this one. You can’t cheat death and win. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“Oh, no,” Hancock growls, the sound emerging from low in his throat. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere except right here.” He cocks his index finger at Danse, and whatever’s still shining in those eyes makes Danse go to him without question. The ghoul reaches out quicker than Danse’s eyes can track and catches him by the elbow, dragging him forwards. Before Danse can react he’s being pressed against the wooden frame of Hancock’s bed, shoved roughly down onto a mattress that creaks with the added weight.

“Strip,” Hancock orders, already shucking out of his coat. “Everything off. Now.”

“But the sy-“

“Oh, _the synth_  wants to watch, don’t ya Nicky?” Hancock calls behind him, tugging his flag belt out of the loops and tossing it carelessly aside.

“I wouldn’t object,” Valentine says, and Danse must be imagining it but his mechanical voice sounds hoarse. “Long as the two of you don’t mind.”

Hancock doesn’t given Danse chance to reply, just barks, “Clothes, now. I won’t ask again.”

His fingers don’t want to work, and they’re trembling too much to get a grip on his shirt buttons. Eventually he rips the damn thing away from his skin like it burns, buttons scattering, gets a grip on his jeans and shimmies them down to his ankles, kicks them aside. He’s getting undressed in front of them both like a prize piece of meat, and what’s worse is his cock’s hanging hard and thick between his legs once he wrestles the underwear off too.

Hancock’s naked too when he next looks up, and Danse almost doesn’t register that someone’s closed the door behind them when the ghoul looms over him, cutting a more imposing figure than his scrawny body should. “You really think I’d make this easy on ya, Danse? After everything we’ve been through?” He clicks his tongue impatiently. “Flip over. Onto your stomach.”

Danse obeys unthinkingly, baring his ass to the room. He feels rather than sees two sets of eyes settling their gazes on his flesh, and while his cheeks are busy heating from the humiliation of it all Hancock reaches out in one fluid motion to sweep Danse’s arms up above his head. He doesn’t get a chance to open his mouth before the ghoul fastens them efficiently to the headboard with his abandoned belt, so tight Danse can’t even struggle.

“What are you-“

“What I should’ve done a long time ago, obviously,” Hancock snarls. Danse flexes his wrists against the restraints, testing them, but only succeeds in cutting the material painfully into his skin. “You think you can just stomp around in your size twelves doing whatever ya want no matter who you hurt in the process, Danse? You ain’t Brotherhood anymore. You’re just like the rest of us.” The words stir something low in Danse’s belly, send his hips straining for some friction against the bedsheets, rutting like a desperate slut.

“But y’know what?” Hancock continues, “You ain’t in charge here. Look at you, spread out on my bed, aching for it. I bet you’re leaking already, ain’t ya? Well tough shit, _synth_. You don’t get to come today. Not on my watch.”

Something strangely like a sob erupts out of Danse. He feels Hancock shift behind him, hears something like a bottle opening, and then a slick finger is pressing firmly between his ass cheeks. “Fuck!” he grits out. The finger slides in and out a couple times, letting Danse adjust to the intrusion, and then another joins it almost immediately, just this side of burning.

“Good boy, taking my fingers like that,” Hancock murmurs. “Least you’re good for one thing, huh? Think you can manage a third?”

“Mmmph,” Danse says, thinking absently of Valentine watching him get his ass fucked. The ghoul scissors his fingers, and just the texture of them feels so strange that he damn near arches off the bed.

“That’s not an answer, Danse,” Hancock reminds him. “Gonna need a bit more to go on than that.”

“Yes,” he manages.

Instead of another finger, there’s a sharp slap to his backside, harder than he would’ve thought the ghoul capable of. The sting of it travels down his thighs. “If it’s hurtin’ you want, you can have it. Yes _what_?”

“Yes, _please_.” And then, because he can, he adds, “Sir.”

The third finger is almost a relief, until they bump up against his prostate and melt Danse into a small puddle in the middle of the bed. His feet twitch where they’re tangled in the sheets, but the fingers don’t relent, just keep nudging that spot inside of him until he’s writhing against his bonds, fiery pleasure slicing through him. “Fuck! Please, Hancock, John, _sir_ , I’m gonna-“

“Nuh-uh,” Hancock says, and the fingers still. “What did I say about you coming? Not gonna happen. Not tonight.”

“ _P_ _lease_.”

“As much as I love to hear you beg, baby, a no’s a no.” The fingers withdraw slowly with a slick wet sound, leaving Danse strangely empty, and Hancock strokes a reverent hand down his bare back like he’s a startled radstag. “Calm, now. Just relax.”

“Is Valentine-“

“Oh, Nick’s still here. Why? You want him to leave?” His voice is still teasing, but there’s a real question underneath, and Danse hears the couch creak as the synth stands up.

“No. I want…” He can’t articulate it, though, not yet, not even after everything, and it’s shame that paints his face scarlet this time. The floorboards echo with footsteps regardless, and Nick’s face hovers at his peripheral.

“What is it you want, doll?” Nick asks, voice neutral. He’s still dressed except for the fedora, which hangs innocently on the back of a chair. Danse shudders, and not at the sight of the gaping hole in the synth’s cheek or the scrap of silicone at his neck.

“I want you here.” The words are enough for Valentine to clamber up on the bed next to Danse. He’s tied too tightly to move and offer him more space, but it doesn’t seem like the synth wants it because he shrugs out of his own coat and lays a careful hand on the pillow next to Danse’s head, just short of touching. A warily pleased smile plays on his lips.

“C’mon. On all fours,” Hancock prompts, tugging at Danse’s knees to get him to shift. It’s difficult to manoeuvre without his hands, but he manages to raise his ass a bit higher in the air, shuffles back onto his knees. “That’s it. You’re being so good for us, Danse. So good.”

Puffs of breath exhaled against his neck, and fingers tracing gentle patterns across his thighs, and Danse realises dimly that Nick has his skin-covered hand in his hair, ruffling the strands tentatively, like he might not be allowed. Danse lets himself nuzzle into the touch, tries to forget his training, forget that he’s stark naked in front of the two men, and concentrates on keeping his eyes open instead. He doesn’t want to miss this; even though he can’t see what Hancock’s doing behind him he can imagine it.

“You’re still so wet,” Hancock announces, one hand slipping around Danse’s thigh to tug gently at his dripping cock. It isn’t enough. “Still so turned on by this, aren’t you? Spread open for the two of us.”

“Hnngh,” says Danse. He feels like he’s hovering right over the precipice, can feel his balls tight between his legs but can’t do a goddamn thing to increase the pressure Hancock’s exerting on his cock. “Please.”

“Y’know what, I’m feelin’ generous. You carry on like this, I might just let you come. But I can’t reward you until you’re really sorry, Danse. You gotta understand that actions like yours have consequences. You were all down for leaving five minutes ago. And how d’you think that would’ve worked out, Danse? You really think your old Brotherhood cronies would have been doing the world a service? You still think that’s what every one of your abominations deserves? Us too?”

“No. I don’t… I just wanted...”

“Hush. Don’t worry, you don’t gotta say anything. Just stay real still, yeah?” It’s hard, though, with fingers still dancing across his balls and down his shaft. Still. He didn’t get through basic training without improving his endurance. He can do this.

“A spanking, then. And then we’ll see how sorry you are.”

The first smack is still a surprise. It’s not hard, not really, but enough to make Danse rear back as heat spreads across his left asscheek. The second, to the opposite cheek, drags a whine from his throat. Hancock keeps up a rhythm, spreading the smacks evenly across his ass, then lands a few lower, to the crease of his thighs, with enough force behind them to really hurt. Danse revels in it, grinds his buttocks back in search of more - more pain, more friction, more anything.

“You good, Danse?” It’s Nick who speaks now, hand still buried in the thick strands of Danse’s dark hair. Another smack, to his lower thigh this time, and Danse _squeaks_.

“Yeah.”

“More?” Hancock asks, and Danse knows he’s smirking.

“Please.”

He can’t say for sure how long it continues, only that it does. Each smack sends him lurching forward into Nick’s arms, which rub soothing patterns into his biceps and down his neck with his good hand. The metal one stays curled into his side, disguised by the pillows and his own body, but Valentine’s grip is a welcome anchor against the onslaught. Heat spreads across his buttocks until his flesh is singing with it, and his hips start thrusting without permission, unsure whether to squirm away or strain to get closer. When the spanking finally tapers off with one last hard smack to his left cheek Danse is panting with the effort of keeping himself still, and Nick’s breathing heavy - unnecessarily - beside him. Hancock exhales in a huge sigh, something like catharsis.

“You did so good, Danse,” he murmurs, stroking a soothing hand across his stinging skin. Valentine hums in what sounds like agreement, pets Danse’s shoulder once and shifts so he can press a kiss against Hancock’s mouth, one that Danse can only hear.

“Can we do anything?” Hancock breathes, but it isn’t directed at him. Hesitance has crept into his voice, strange after everything. “For you?”

“I’m good right here, doll,” Nick replies. “Honest. Being here with you is enough.”

“If you’re sure.” There’s bite in his words now, certainty, and Danse shudders as a confident hand curls around his cock once again. “Let me know if there’s anything, yeah? I’m sure Danse wouldn’t object to being put on the back burner for a few minutes.”

Danse has no idea what they’re talking about, but the hand is stroking and he can’t think about much of anything else. Then something’s pressing against his entrance again, thicker than fingers this time, and he barely has time to wonder exactly _what_  before a set of half-lips are pressed against the shell of his ear. “This okay?”

“Yes,” Danse answers. _Of course_ , he wants to add.

“I’ll go slow,” Hancock vows, and there’s a collective intake of three breaths as he eases his cock inside, careful as anything. Danse wonders at the sensation - like nothing he’s ever felt before. So much _more_  than Hancock’s bony fingers, and longer, too, and he isn’t sure how long the slow pressure takes until the ghoul’s fully seated inside him, but somehow it’s still going, and Danse is convulsing around him-

“There ya go,” Hancock echoes. “You look so beautiful like this.”

The first experimental thrust sends Danse’s head spinning, and a small helpless sound leaves his lips. The next is angled _just so_ , and hits his prostate, damn near whites out his vision with the pulse of arousal it sends rushing through his entire body. His wrists ache where they’re straining against the fabric of Hancock’s belt. “Hancock-“

“I got ya, Danse. You’re safe, we got ya,” John whispers, pressing a kiss and then a nip of teeth into the meat of Danse’s shoulder.

“Can I- I need to-“

He feels like he’s going to burst. His balls are painfully tight against his body, and each thrust of Hancock’s only heightens the pressure. He needs-

“Whenever you need to, sunshine.”

It’s almost instantaneous. Danse comes so hard against the sheets he sees stars, and Hancock follows a minute later, erratic thrusts into Danse’s ass and then a heavy sigh of relief. He holds himself still for a long second, then eases out as gently as he can. The loss still makes Danse whine.

Hancock unties his hands without a word, leaving Danse to rub at his sore wrists before he flips over to look at them both. Valentine’s already swinging his legs over the side of the bed as if to make a quick getaway, and Hancock’s tugged the sheet up to his chin where he’s sitting cross-legged. There’s an awkward moment of silence, a beat where nobody knows what to say, and then Hancock says warily, “You okay? Realise we might’ve, uh, sprung that on ya.”

He’s _worried_ , Danse realises with a jolt. Valentine’s eagerness to flee makes a certain amount of sense, and Danse gets the distinct feeling they discussed this beforehand.

“I’m fine. Good,” he hears himself say. _Outstanding_ , he thinks. The index finger and thumb of his left hand encircle his right wrist, rubbing at the scarlet marks there, and Hancock’s gaze darts down to the action.

“Only if that was all too much-“

“No. It was perfect.”

“We, uh, we change your mind, then?” Hancock asks, and the uncertainty is back in full force, enough to make Danse start.

 _Rhys_. He’d almost forgotten, even through the spanking, which is ridiculous. The entire concept seems far away, covered in a gossamer haze that doesn’t quite reach Danse through the post-orgasm lull. His asscheeks and stomach are still sticky with lubricant and other things. “I- yes. I love you.”

The words feel like a dam breaking. Fuck Rhys. Fuck bigots and traitors and misplaced loyalty. Maybe it’s selfish, but Danse finds he doesn’t give a single damn. Instead, he squirms over to press a chaste kiss to Hancock’s lips, one hand going up to stroke the tough flesh of his cheek. “Thank you. For making me see sense.”

“Only had to fuck it into ya, but yeah. No biggie,” the ghoul chuckles.

It won’t ever go away, the guilt, Danse supposes. It’s already creeping back in at the edges of his mind, but the lead weight in the cavity of his chest has eased some, because there’s love shining out of Hancock’s face and something close to affection in Valentine’s, and Danse feels his own emotion rise to the brim of himself, barely contained. He’ll always be in the Brotherhood’s debt, but his own death won’t fix that. Giving Rhys the satisfaction won’t fix it either. But speaking of satisfaction...

“You didn’t...” he starts, gesturing to Nick.

“Oh,” the synth says. “No. I, uh, I can’t.” Danse doesn’t miss how he averts his gaze, flinching slightly at the confession.

“Oh,” he says, lamely. “Isn’t there anything...”

“Nah. Don’t worry about me, doll. You don’t need to pretend, either. I’m just glad you two let an old synth along for the ride.” Before anyone can protest, Nick forges ahead, metal fingers clenched too tight in the bedsheets, “What are we gonna do about action man over with Amari, then?” Valentine asks. “Woman’s itching to put him out of his misery once and for all, but that seems a bit extreme when we could just toss him to the super mutants. At least give him a fighting chance.”

“I’d like to speak with him,” Danse announces, already fearing the inevitable uproar. “With Haylen, too. He deserves to know what happened to the Prydwen, and I suspect they might want to resolve their differences and reach an amicable outcome.”

“Alright,” Hancock agrees, too quick. “But we come with you. No arguments.”

He really should’ve known. Apparently Danse is too impulsive to be left alone with his former brother-in-arms - and he never thought he’d hear that descriptor applied to him. “Fine.”

“Good. That’s settled, then. But before we ruin the post-coital mood completely, how ‘bout we all take a nice long nap.”

Danse grins. A nap sounds wonderful right about now.

* * *

 

Rhys is still in bad shape when they get over there. Danse wasn’t expecting a miracle, but his face is pinched into a sullen frown, and his bandages are blood-soaked.

“He refuses to let me change them,” Amari huffs, bustling around with equipment. The three of them are arranged in a semi-circle by Rhys’s cot with Haylen behind, refusing to look at him. “I told him they’ll get infected. Will he listen to me?”

“Don’t need your fuckin’ hands on me, dirty sympathiser. Fuck, you’re probably a synth too. You’re all fucking synths,” Rhys grumbles without much bite. “And y’know what happens to synths? They get _dead_.”

“Yeah. About that,” Hancock grins. “This is my town, and we got rules here. First off, everyone is welcome, s’long as they ain’t an Institute spy. And that means no killin’ without my say-so.”

“Fuck you, fucking ghoul. As if you have any authority. You’re disgusting. You’re all freaks, this entire town-“

“Now I can live with you insulting me, soldier, but you start insulting my town? We’re gonna have problems. Goodneighbor’s of the people, for the people, yeah? We got a real community vibe goin’ on here. So you insult the town, you insult the people, and they’re good people. They certainly don’t need ex-Brotherhood scum like you runnin’ your mouth.”

“Ex-Brotherhood? What the fuck are you talking about? It’s these freaks that got themselves thrown out, not me. Looks like you found Haylen, then. She doesn’t deserve it, though - they should’ve fed her to the ferals after what she did-“

“They’re gone, Rhys,” Danse finally interrupts, because he has to be the one to say it. “The Prydwen is gone. There was… an explosion. There’s nothing left.” It feels like a relief to finally utter it out loud, although his heart still hammers too loud at having to form the words. Rhys’s eyes widen from more than just the pain in his side, and he raises himself up on the cot with a grunt of effort.

“What?”

“It’s true,” Haylen pipes up. “We saw it. You can go see for yourself, if you like, once you’re healed up. And if you don’t want the doctor patching you up, I could take a look. I always did, before, remember?”

“They can’t be _gone_. Why should I trust a word you freaks say?”

“You don’t have to trust us. The evidence is in the sky, Rhys. I’m really sorry that you had to hear it from us - I know it’s not the way you wanted it. But it’s true.” Haylen’s voice is quiet, and one hand awkwardly comes up to scratch at the nape of her neck where the unfamiliar tickle of hair has settled. “I’m here for you, even though you don’t deserve it, because you and Danse are all I have left. This doesn’t make anything okay between us, between any of us, but I won’t leave you because you’re an asshole. No-one deserves to be alone through this. But you leave Danse alone, and we leave town as soon as you’re healed up enough to walk.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Rhys hisses.

“Then don’t. Leave by yourself. But in that state - even if you give it a week, you’re still gonna need pretty strong painkillers, and they make people lazy. Not the best fighting form, but by all means. Go it alone.”

“Danse promised his life to me in exchange for your location. I fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

“And I was going to,” Danse says. It isn’t an excuse, he knows, and the steel in Rhys’s eyes gives him pause for a moment longer than he’d like. “But I found something to live for.” His gaze flicks to Hancock first, standing with his arms folded tight across his chest, one hand resting close to his shoulder holster just in case; then at Nick, frowning down at Rhys with an amalgamation of disgust and bemusement in his amber eyes. It’s ridiculous, of course, that he’s fallen for them both. A junkie ghoul and a synth who looks more like a robot, and Danse can’t look at them both without something tugging in his chest, but Valentine’s mouth is curved up at the edges and Hancock rolls his eyes and it all makes sense, somehow.

“You deserve to be eradicated, Danse. Nothing you do is going to change that. We both know it, deep down,” Rhys says, voice void of everything, even fury. “You’re the one who has to live with that, knowing you made the wrong choice. Knowing you betrayed us.”

“Listen to me carefully, you jumped-up toy soldier,” Hancock hisses. “Who the fuck do you think you are, to make those kind of calls? Who are you to say that Danse is less human than you, just ‘cause he’s got a few synthetic parts? No more than the power armour you insist on runnin’ around in. He’s more human than you’ll ever be - you ain’t got a scrap of empathy in ya.”

That’s it. Hancock’s clearly seething, trembling with suppressed fury, but he doesn’t punch Rhys in the gut or apply painful pressure to his bandages. Doesn’t draw his knife and slice the man open. Just hisses the words into his ear and steps back, draws an arm around Danse’s waist and gives Nick’s hand a squeeze.

“Oh, fuck me,” Rhys breathes. “Whatever fucking creepy menage-a-trois bullshit you got going on, synth, I don’t wanna hear about it.”

Danse just grins.

* * *

 

Duncan arrives five days after they blow the Prydwen out of the sky.

Nora’s in the kitchenette when someone knocks at the door, elbows deep in soapy water feeling for all the world like she’s back in her old life, and any minute now Nate’s arms will draw themselves around her and he’ll tug her back into his chest, whisper something about Shaun needing a feed.

The startled shout from the living room prompts her to dry her hands off on a dish towel, slink around the doorframe to see Mac at the open front door, his back to her. She watches him sink to his knees and crush a smaller body into his chest, feels her heart at once beating and breaking for him.

Because Duncan looks sick. She hadn’t really known what to expect, even with the list of symptoms Mac had dictated to her, but the kid’s face is swollen, and what she can see of his arms is covered in the boils MacCready mentioned. There are bags under his blue eyes from the vertibird ride, from sitting next to a Courser for too many hours, and his hair is mussed from the journey, but he’s here, and he’s alive, and Mac has his son back.

“Duncan. Sweetheart, are you okay? I missed you so much. Oh, God, Duncan, I missed you.”

“Why didn’ you come back for me, daddy?” are the first words out of the kid’s mouth. Nora blanches, expects MacCready to rock back on his heels but he remains steady, like he expected the blow. Slowly, as inconspicuously as she can, she steps forward to place a shaky hand on his shoulder.

She expects him to fall back on platitudes, because that’s what she would’ve done, but Mac’s had years to come to terms with this, has two decades of Wasteland grit on him, and he just says, “I don’t have an excuse, Duncan. I really don’t. But I love you so much, and I did everything I could to get you better so we could be together again, I swear.”

The Courser looming behind them both shifts his weight, grunts something about Father needing to see them, and marches away like he hasn’t just seen two worlds shatter in front of him. Nora tugs at Mac’s shoulder, trying to get them both inside so she can shut the Institute out even if it’s just pretend, even if she swears camera eyes are watching them from shadowy corners.

“I dun’ like it here, daddy,” Duncan mumbles from where he’s still pressed into Mac’s chest. “Too bright.”

This startles a laugh out of both of them, because the kid sounds so much like his father it’s uncanny. MacCready has to brush tears away from his eyes with a ratty sleeve while he settles Duncan on the couch, but he pastes a grin on his face like a champ. “You’re gonna be okay now, kiddo. There are people who are gonna help us, and then we can get out of here for good.”

“And you’ll stay with me?” Duncan asks.

“And I’ll stay with you. Of course I’ll stay with you. I’m never letting you out of my sight again, not until you’re an old man.” _B_ _ecause you will be_ , he doesn’t say.

“Who’s that?” the kid wonders, pointing a chubby index finger at Nora. Because of course he’d wonder who the vintage woman in pristine marigolds clogging up his father-son time is. Because Nora hasn’t said a word out loud since he arrived, because maybe she isn’t cut out to be a goddamn mother because children are actually quite terrifying when you think about it too long.

“This is Nora. She’s…” Mac trails off, biting his lower lip in that awkward way that makes her want to kiss him there.

“I’m your daddy’s best friend,” Nora tries. “I’ve been helping him look for something to make you feel better.” It’s not enough, probably, but it’ll do for now. Gets rid of the question marks in Duncan’s eyes, anyway, because he goes right back to sucking on his thumb, his face half-hidden by shadow and MacCready’s jacket.

“I should go see Shaun,” Nora decides like a grown-ass woman, clearing her throat. “He might have a cure synthesised by now.” It’s a long shot, maybe, but they need some alone time, and Mac needs to talk things through with his son so he knows that while the next couple of days might not be strictly pleasant, they’ll at least be worth it. Shit, how much can a five year old conceivably understand about his own sickness? How much have they managed to explain to him?

How would she have handled it, if it had been Shaun?

“I won’t be long,” she whispers on her way out, not sure if she wants them to hear or not. She slips out into the corridor through a crack in the door to avoid letting too much light in, clicks it shut near silently behind her. The walk up to Shaun’s office isn’t a long one, and the fluorescents hardly bother Nora, but it’s with more than a fraction of trepidation that she raps her knuckles against the door, feeling idiotic for knocking in the first place. _This is your son_ , the voice in her head reminds her tersely.

Sure doesn’t fucking feel like it, though. Not after seeing Mac and Duncan slip back into their little family like it took no effort at all.

“Come in!”

When she opens the door it’s hardly to what she was expecting. Shaun - the old man, the old man who’s her son - is crouching beside the ten year old boy he’s constructed to look like her son, guiding his hands through the complex construction of a small toy robot.

“Mother. You came at a perfect time,” Shaun announces, shifting to watch her. “You’ve met the child before, but I thought it was high time he get some real-world experience, as it were. I’m just demonstrating some simple mechanics to calibrate his fine motor skills.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Was there something you needed?”

“I just… I mean, you already know this, but, uh, Duncan’s here. Mac and I were just wondering how the cure’s coming along.” She hates herself for stuttering, hates herself for digging her own fingernails deep into the skin of her thigh.

“Ah, yes. It’s doing nicely. A few more days and it should be ready for implementation.”

“And it’s safe? You’ve tested it?”

“My scientists know what they’re doing, mother. Don’t worry yourself about it - the boy will be well seen to. As for you… I thought it might do you some good to spend some time with him,” Shaun says, gesturing to the kid still tweaking the circuitboard at the robot’s back. “I realise it must have been a blow to you, missing out on raising your own child. I imagine this must be bringing up some painful memories for you, so I thought this might ease them.”

Nora’s struck speechless. The last she’d seen of this kid Shaun flipped a switch and it sunk into shutdown mode, chin sinking to its chest like someone had zapped the synthetic life out of it. And now she’s supposed to mother it, like she knows how to.

Worse, some half-dead mothering instinct buried deep within her wants to wrap her arms around the kid and never let him go.

“I don’t think…”

“Nonsense! He’ll be on his best behaviour,” the old man says. “Won’t you, Shaun?”

The kid nods, blinking huge brown eyes at Nora, sitting there in his rumpled stripy t-shirt and cutoff jeans with a tiny screwdriver in his little hand. If it was real, he’d be five years older than Duncan. If it was real, Nora would have only lost ten years instead of sixty.

“Okay,” she agrees, before she can change her mind. “We have plenty of room - he can come stay with us.”

“That’s fantastic news, isn’t it, Shaun?” It’ll never get less weird to hear the name she’d given him coming out of her son’s mouth, but she grits her teeth against the discomfort. “I know you’ve been through a lot to be here, mother. Just finding us was a feat in itself, but I had such strong faith that you’d manage to come back to me, even after all these years. That’s a mother’s love for you. And the child might not grow in physical years, but he’ll grow intellectually. Emotionally. With your guidance.” Shaun pauses, straightens up and strides over to take Nora’s elbow so gently she barely feels it. “Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions for those we love. Sacrifices. But through all of that, it’s important to remember what’s important. _Who_  is important.”

Nora takes the child’s hand. Tugs him carefully away from Shaun, resists the temptation to pull him behind her to shield him with her body.

Because she knows.

Christ, does she know.

* * *

 

Danse fiddles awkwardly with the knot of his tie, tugs the cuffs of his suit jacket further down to cover the fading marks at his wrists. He still feels just as awkward in his patched up suit, but at least this time he knows what he’s heading downstairs to.

The mirror in Hancock’s room is a grimy old thing, speckled with age and dust, but he slicks a hand through his hair, tries to fix the cowlick that always presents itself when he could do without it, and subsequently gives it up as an impossible task because Hancock’s hand is on his arm. “Leave it,” the ghoul says. “It suits you.”

Hancock’s shed his usual attire in favour of a similar three-piece, minus the tie. The first two buttons of his shirt gape open, just enough for Danse to appreciate the ridges of irradiated skin underneath, to hook a finger in the fabric there and tug the other man closer, pressing a kiss to his hairless jaw. To skim his free hand down his side, past his ribs until he can get a grip on his right hip, holding him steady.

Valentine isn’t an interruption but an addition, Danse supposes when the synth comes up behind to claim some space in the mirror. Adjusts his own tie, worn over a dark grey shirt this time, one that complements the glow of his eyes, and darker slacks. He isn’t wearing his coat - looks strange without it, but in a way that makes Danse’s heart swell with trust at knowing them both so intimately, that they can be like this without blushing.

Even if he’s the only one capable of it.

“We have reservations,” Valentine reminds them, the only one who’s really familiar with the outdated concept, leaning in to peck Hancock’s cheek and then Danse’s, a little hesitantly but not enough to make them tense. “You know how Charlie gets if we’re late.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hancock agrees. “We better get a move on, then. Took long enough for Danse to quit preening - and we got plenty of time for undoing all that effort later.” He’s right. The sun’s just started to set over the horizon, bathing the room in a golden glow and casting their three shadows over the bed. They’ll get dinner, and drinks, and they’ll return when darkness has fallen. Hancock will light one of the oil lamps by the bed, and Danse will set up some candles while Nick divests the ghoul of his clothes, and they’ll take each other apart in the twilight.

It should be weird, walking down to the Third Rail all three of them, but it manages not to be. Danse lets the two of them go ahead holding hands, busies himself with opening and closing doors like they might not be capable of it themselves, but doesn’t resist when Hancock tucks his free arm into Danse’s, lets Nick pull out a chair for him and sinks into it gladly. They order wine and Nick lights up a cigarette while they drink, plumes of smoke escaping the hole in his cheek.

“I need to say something, before I lose my nerve,” Danse announces when they’re halfway through the appetisers, set down in front of them by the Cockney robot behind the bar. Nick doesn’t eat, and the chems quell Hancock’s appetite, but the synth had risked a spoonful of squirrel stew and Hancock made an effort for Danse’s benefit. “I know I haven’t been the easiest person to be around. I know I’ve done some unforgivable things that I can only begin to atone for. And I know this isn’t going to be perfect, not yet. Maybe not ever. But I just want to promise that I’ll try my best not to fuck this up.”

“That takes guts to say, doll,” Valentine says, and then Hancock chimes in with his signature shit-eating grin, raising his spoon in solidarity, “Hear, hear!”

It’s not going to be an easy road ahead. They’re going to fight. Danse will revert to his Brotherhood mantras when things get tough and Hancock will run from their problems and Valentine will withdraw out of habit or what he deems necessity.

But Rhys has agreed to leave with Haylen once his injuries have healed up. Maxson’s dead. Nobody is coming after Danse because of his true nature, and he might be, finally, amazingly, allowed to be himself for the first time in his entire existence.

“Y’know, this is nice and all, and I hate to interrupt the party, gentlemen.” The voice startles Danse so much he drops his spoon into the bowl with a splash. Deep and gritty, and so close by it sounds as though the words are growled right into his ear canal. When he glances around it’s still only the three of them: Magnolia still crooning onstage, Whitechapel Charlie cleaning glasses behind the bar in a whir of mechanical limbs. Hancock meets his gaze warily, a frown tugging his brow downwards, and then, so slowly it’s almost physically painful, they turn to look at Nick.

Whose face is devoid of all expression. His jaw’s gone slack and his amber eyes stare unseeingly ahead, hands lax on the tabletop. Even though he should have known it, Danse is still startled when his mouth opens and someone else’s voice comes out. “Mnemonic impressions indeed. Valentine really thought he could get rid of me that easily, huh? I’m afraid I’m gonna have to take this one back to the Institute where all the bad synths go. He’s marked for dissection and termination. As for you, M7-97, we’ll be back for you. Although it would be lovely if you decide to join us a little sooner. After all, I’m sure you’ll feel Valentine’s loss… keenly.”

And with that, the synth blinks out of existence in front of Danse’s very eyes, and the bottom drops out of his stomach.

 


End file.
